“Don’t Ever Call it a Boat!”: Visual Training Aids for the US Navy’s Bureau of Personnel
摘要
The Silk Screen Shop at Amache was approved because it would provide jobs and job training for incarcerees. In order to justify this function, it needed to be economically self-sufficient. The first, and primary, customer was the Training Division of the US Navy’s Bureau of Personnel. The Training Division supported the rapidly growing navy by packaging information in easily digestible units and formats. The legibility of their poster design built upon the aesthetic conventions of Work Projects Administration (WPA) posters. Surviving World War II posters are typically propaganda materials for the public; this chapter introduces the subset of largely lost and unstudied internally circulated materials. The chapter also provides a case study of the employment of incarcerated populations in the war effort.