World War II Propaganda Leaflets

This collection consists of three black and white Japanese language psychological warfare propaganda leaflets (Nos. 2094, 2097, and 2101) designed and printed by the United States Office of War Information (OWI) to be dropped by air over Japan 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 long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers. 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 leaflets to their targets. By the end of the war, tens of millions of leaflets had been airdropped over Japan.