ITEMS

Japanese youth labor

This photograph is from the March 12, 1941 edition of the Photographic Weekly Report (Shashin Shuho), which was a weekly pictorial journal published by the Japanese Cabinet Intelligence Department during the interwar years of 1938-1945. This magazine functioned as propaganda that the Japanese government used to shape public moral for the war. This image is of boy working as a fisherman. During the war years, the government conscripted Japanese children and adolescents into labor to help the nation. Schools became more focused around vocational education. Girls learned cooking and housekeeping, while boys learned horticulture, fishing, how to operate machinery, and military drills. The caption of this image translates to: "'Youth Are the Advance Army Shouldering Responsibility for Japan.' (Translation from: David C. Earhart, ed., "Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media" (Armonk, NE: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 192)

Jacar (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records), "A Window into the Early Show Period: Shashin Shuho: Weekly Photographic Journal," March 12, 1941 issue, https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/shuhou-english/pdf/all/A06031075400.pdf

1941-03-12

Public Domain

PWR_TeenagerWorking.jpg