Hey everyone! So I've got this project where I am creating a lesson for students to analyze propaganda during World War 2. I have it sectioned up so that the classroom is split up into groups and stations. Each of the stations goes through a variety of images used by a belligerent nation involved in WW2 e.g. USA, UK, Germany, etc.
As these posters would have it, they're all written in Hiragana/Kanji! I was hoping some of y'all would lend a helping hand and translate these for me. I'll provide a little list so you can just copy and paste it, and type in the translations next with the corresponding picture. It should go in order with how it flows in the album.
Bird -
FDR -
Kids & Countries -
Soldier -
School Kids -
Workers Unite -
That "Workers Unite" thing you have is actually a poster exhorting everyone to stand together to repel the foreign invaders, using anything they have as a weapon. Of course, this would have been tantamount to mass suicide had it actually happened. My own dear, sweet, kind, lovable and deeply lamented tiny mother-in-law was a young woman at the time and they were training to use naginata (traditional weapon, essentially a knife with a six-foot handle) to repel an invasion. They would have been mown down like ripe hay. You don't bring knives to a gunfight. She also helped paste together the incendiary balloons launched against the West Coast and which killed some people on a Sunday School picnic. I let her go to her grave thinking the balloons all fell in the ocean.
I recently spent some time flipping through our local newspaper from the last few weeks before the end of the war. It is the actual paper, not microfilm, and the decades have blurred the articles to the point of being illegible in many cases, but the headlines are still interesting. There is a mix of stories about huge flights of B-29s bombing even the small towns in the countryside and of P-51s strafing things (with impunity, I might add). One of the things they strafed was the same train line my daughter rode to high school....chilling to contemplate.
But mixed in among the articles indicating total air superiority on the part of the Allies were articles about the Kamikaze slamming their bodies into enemy ships, about a bureau being set up to fully mobilize the schoolchildren into the war effort, about this being the time for people to stoically endure all things...and how we're still going to win this war!
By this point, the handwriting on the wall had to be pretty clear. It is hard to believe anyone could look around them and remain in either ignorance or denial; the war was being brought to their very doorsteps and with a vengeance they were powerless even to meaningfully resent, much less repel.
I stumbled across a small advertisement at the bottom of one of the pages from an edition a couple of weeks before the end of the war. It is small, but it speaks volumes. It is from a small business in Ashikaga City and is advertising their line of wooden guns, exhorting everyone to make sure they have their wooden gun and be ready to stand together to repel the coming invasion with them. It sounded so asinine I did something I almost never do, which was to look something up...wooden gun...to make sure I wasn't missing something. It was as I had originally interpreted, though, just a long stick shaped like rifle. A stick. Just a damned stick. How could anybody, regardless of how brainwashed or deluded they may have been by years of carefully controlled media and internal propaganda look at such an advertisement made entirely in earnest and not realize that the war was utterly and irretrievably lost and that they were now bound together in what was intended to be in a very real and literal way on the level of the individual a mass suicide pact?
Here is the advertisement:
I have photos of some of the other articles referenced if they would help your project.
The paper referenced is the Ryomo Shimbun, a local paper servicing the southeastern portion of Gunma Prefecture and Ashikaga City in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo at the edge of the Kanto Plain.
There are mountains of interesting things available only in Japanese, things so arcane and obscure that not even any Japanese people have taken the slightest notice of them in decades and which in all probability you may be not only the first foreigner ever to read it but also the only one who ever will.
I was also recently hunting the very elusive 白蘭の歌 (White Orchid's Song), a novel serialized in the Mainichi Shinbun in late 1938, and had to go to the Gunma Prefectural Library to access the newspaper on microfilm to search for each day's portion buried in the newspaper. Although Americans tend to think the war started in December 1941, Japan had already been active in China for quite a while and things were going pretty well. The paper was so chock full of militaristic content it was astounding to look at. There seemed to be little room for anything which wasn't covering (and glorifying) the war.
People who live here in a state of illiteracy and Japanese incompetence are beyond a merely blinkered existence, they're walking around blindfolded...and don't even know it.
By the way, the novel (which I am now reading on B4 printouts) is available in only two places...in the newspaper microfilms or in a scanned version from the Japanese version of the Library of Congress.
I have to say, though this isn't really the appropriate thread, your evangelism of working on the language has spurred me to restarting my efforts. So, thank you.
I have to say, though this isn't really the appropriate thread, your evangelism of working on the language has spurred me to restarting my efforts. So, thank you.
The first seems to be just a magazine cover. The second is a comic book cover (the text just says "comic (book) February edition". The third is proclaiming the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The fourth is celebrating the 38th anniversary of Army Day. The fifth is just more Co-Prosperity Sphere.
I wouldn't really consider any of this as very interesting as "propaganda" material, except the last one. Did the place(s) you found this stuff have nothing to say regarding them?
國民精神總動員
雄飛報國之秋
帝國政府
Kokumin seishin sôdôin
Yûhi hôkoku no toki
Teikoku seihu National Spiritual General Mobilization
The time for embarking on showing your patriotism
Imperial Government
It was usually followed by
欲しがりません勝つまでは (hoshigari masen katsu madewa)
"We won't ask for it until we win"
Japan was not (and is not) rich in resources and during the war everything was short. Thus this slogan to encourage people not to waste/spend and to endure the difficulties.
Another famous propaganda:
大東亜共栄圏 (dai toua kyouei ken) Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
八紘一宇 (hakko ichiu) Eight Crown cords, one roof (i.e. all the world under one roof)
I'm quoting from English Wikipedia:
"The original concept was an idealistic wish to "free" Asia from colonial powers, but soon, nationalists saw it as a way to gain resources to keep Japan a modern power, and militarists saw the same resources as raw materials for war."
I appreciate your guys' help, but I feel like there is some misunderstanding occurring in my request. I am asking for *just* a translation of the text that is displayed in each of the posters. I provided a bullet point list in my original post to help organize the translations out in sequential order as it is displayed in the imgur link, and it appears that it hasn't been used!
I apologize if I'm being pushy, but you guys are going up and over my expectations! No context or historical explanation necessary. Just translations please.
Bird - Kokumin Seishin Sodoin = National Spiritual Mobilization Movement (as Toritoribe-san mentioned)
FDR - Manga, February edition = Manga or comic (as I mentioned), also some publisher's marks, and the price of 30 sen
Kids & Countries - Daitoa Kyodo Sengen = Greater East Asia Joint Declaration
Soldier - Uchiteshi tomamu = Strike/shoot to the finish or Strike/shoot until (the enemy) is destroyed. To the left of the illustration is "38th Anniversary Army Memorial Day"
School Kids - Nikkaman Kyodo Tenkataihei = Peace through cooperation of Japan, China, Manchuria
Workers Unite - Kokumin Soukekki = Countrymen, Arise!
Most excellent,, Majestic. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for your translation, that is exactly what I was looking for! Shout out to Toritoribe for your help as well.
Most excellent,, Majestic. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for your translation, that is exactly what I was looking for! Shout out to Toritoribe for your help as well.
If you have a chance and it fits the lesson plan, tell the kids that many Japanese people are surprised when they learn that America had shortages, rationing, victory gardens, scrap drives, etc during the war.
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