ITEMS

Japanese youth in an airplane

This photograph is from the September 15, 1943 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. In this picture, a Japanese youth leaning next to an air plane pointing at the sky, while another youth sits in the cockpit. The Air Force Bureau began recruiting boys ages eleven through thirteen for a five year course, and ages sixteen through nineteen to began pilot training. The caption for this image translates too: "'The Sky is the Final Battlefield Flight Crew Training Center Now Recruiting Students." (Translation from: David C. Earhart, ed., "Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media" (Armonk, NE: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 202)

Jacar (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records), "A Window into the Early Show Period: Shashin Shuho: Weekly Photographic Journal," September 15, 1943 issue, https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/shuhou-english/pdf/all/A06031088400.pdf

1943-09-15

Public Domain

PWR_BoyWavingFromPlane.jpg