World War II Propaganda Leaflets Kurzman

This collection consists of one black and white and three color Japanese language psychological warfare propaganda leaflets (Nos. 112, 2001, 2010, and 2031) designed and printed by the United States Office of War Information (OWI) to be dropped by air over Japan and Japanese-occupied territories during World War II, circa mid-1945.

The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was formed during World War II on June 13, 1942, combining several preceding agencies to create a centralized unit to provide information about the ongoing war to the American public. The Domestic Branch of the OWI utilized printed materials, radio, and motion pictures to achieve their mission to help Americans understand the status and progress of the war effort; the Overseas Branch used print media to promote American war aims to foreign audiences and operated a Psychological Warfare Branch to use propaganda messages to target enemy troops and populations. In April 1944, the OWI office in Honolulu, Hawaii, added full-scale propaganda activities aimed at Japan to its war information duties, designing and printing Japanese-language propaganda leaflets to be dropped by air over Japan and Japanese-occupied territories by American military aircraft. By mid-1945 the OWI had established an office with a printing plant on Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, putting them closer to the bases of the US Army Air Forces' XXI Bomber Command whose aircraft were tasked with the job of delivering the majority of the leaflets to their targets. By the end of the war, tens of millions of leaflets had been airdropped over Japan. Leaflet No. 2010 is known to have been designed and illustrated by American-born woman artist Frances Lee Blakemore (neé Frances Lee Wismer) who spent over half of her life in Japan. Born in 1906, Blakemore studied art at the University of Washington, graduating in 1935 with a Batchelor of Arts degree. She married Glenn Frederic Baker and the couple moved to Tokyo. In 1940, the political situation in Japan prompted her to return to the United States to avoid internment. Blakemore settled in Honolulu, Hawaii, and joined the OWI Office there following the United States' entry in World War II in December 1941. In 1946, divorced from Baker, Blakemore returned to Japan to work for the Civil Information and Education Division of the office of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) during the US occupation of Japan. In 1954 she married fellow American Thomas L. Blakemore; the couple continued to live and work in Japan until their retirement in the 1980s to the Seattle, Washington, area. In 1990 they founded the Blakemore Foundation to promote Americans' study of Asian language and arts. The donor, I. A. Kurzman, served in the Pacific as a machinist mate, 2nd class, stationed aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-18) from which aircraft carried propaganda leaflets to drop on Japan circa mid-August 1945, near the end of the war.