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CHAPTER THREE 8QK\]ZQVOIV1LMV\Q\a+ZQ[Q[ In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Kuniyoshi sought many opportunities to contribute to U.S. propaganda that would not only prove his patriotism but also reinforce his credentials as an American artist. Another motivating factor, no less important, was a view shared by many of his colleagues: that the U.S. government badly needed the expertise of fine artists to produce more effective pictorial propaganda materials. In his 1942 speech “Civilization Besieged,” Kuniyoshi complained that even though artists like him were eager to make “propaganda and educational art,” the government had preferred “the work of the commercial artists, the illustrator, the cartoonist” to that of the fine artist. While he did not dismiss the value to the government of those “non-fine art” artists, he suggested that fine artists come together as a collective to find the most appropriate venue to contribute. Artists, he said, could fill people’s need for “spiritual activity,” especially during times of upheaval, and could ensure that America’s cultural life continued to flourish even in wartime.1 Kuniyoshi would have the opportunity to do what he preached as an artist when he was asked to contribute to the war poster project for the Office of War Information (OWI) in the months between late 1942 and early 1943. Kuniyoshi completed only a few paintings during the war; a large part of his artistic production focused on creating war posters aimed at inspiring all Americans to join the fight for freedom and democracy. He resorted to a modernist language of universality , promoting a kind of universal humanism in both his pictorial and textual wartime work. This strategy aligned him with other like-minded American modernists , particularly the liberals and progressive artists with whom he was associated , and allowed him to continue to assert his place within American art even under these precarious circumstances. Picturing an Identity Crisis 71 However, as the work of a loyal and exemplar enemy alien meant to lend credibility to the U.S. propagation of democracy, Kuniyoshi’s designs were curiously ambiguous. While the main objective of this crucial project was to show Japanese atrocities as rendered by an émigré Japanese who abhorred Japan’s militarism —and indeed many of Kuniyoshi’s drawings show explicit violence and an overt emotional urgency not found in his prewar work—these drawings show a more nuanced approach to propaganda imagery that distinguishes him from other propagandists. These pictorial representations could be considered Kuniyoshi’s alternatives to those in other contemporary anti-Japan graphics that ridiculed and demonized everything Japanese. Kuniyoshi chose instead a pictorial strategy that appealed to universal themes and issues, such as humanity in peril and victimhood under militarism and oppression. This approach may also point to his unique position in, and ambivalence about, contributing to the “anti-Japan” propaganda program of a government that was itself promulgating institutional racism in the form of exclusionary laws and mass internment. His carefully devised representational strategy served as a critical means for Kuniyoshi to cope with his precarious position as well as with what he realized to be an illusion of democratic principles and the contradictory and complicated feelings this realization produced. Creating“Anti-Japan”Imagery In June 1942 Kuniyoshi received a letter from Archibald MacLeish, a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and assistant director of the OWI at the time, inviting him to join other American artists, among them Ben Shahn, Stuart Davis, Reginald Marsh, William Gropper, and Marc Chagall, in contributing to the war poster program. The OWI, established by the Roosevelt administration earlier that month, was charged with consolidating, managing, and distributing war information and propaganda , both domestically and abroad. Various government and private agencies were already producing propaganda materials in response to World War II, including the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures (OFF), for which MacLeish was director, but they were integrated into the OWI in the summer of 1942. The OWI was meant to serve as a clearinghouse to effectively use various media, such as posters, radio broadcasts, and motion pictures, as well as the news media, to inform the American public about the war situation and to minimize conflicting reports. In the words of Elmer Davis, who had been sworn in as director of the new OWI on June 17, the new government information bureau pledged to “get out as much news as possible, as speedily as possible, as accurately as possible.”2 In his letter, MacLeish...

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