Waiting for the Signal From Home

Waiting for the Signal From Home

California
Anti-Japanese
Political Cartoon

The Cartoon is titled “Waiting for the Signal From Home” and it shows thousands of Japanese people who are all stereotyped marching from Washington, through Oregon and to California to pick up blocks of explosives from a small shed named “Honorable 5th Column”, the shed has another stereotyped Japanese looking across the ocean with a telescope. The obvious message being one that the Japanese Americans were simply awaiting a signal from Japan to start wreaking havoc within the United States. This is emphasized even more when the definition of “Fifth Column” is a group of people who undermine a larger group from within in favour of an opposing force. This appeared days before Roosevelt issued the order to round up all Japanese living on the West Coast and only months after Pearl Harbour

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), PM Newspaper, New York

Richard H. Minear, Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (New York, The New Press, 1999)

13 February 1942

Michael Wilsher

Original drawings presented in “The Dr. Seuss Collection” by the Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

English

Visual - political cartoon

20th century California