"Freedom will prevail" by Carl Giles, Post-1944

Catalogue ref: INF 3/1348

Under the Union Jack, with the slogan ‘Freedom will prevail', smiling British and Australian soldiers attack a Japanese soldier on the globe. This cartoon is in the distinctive Giles style, using the kind of characterisation that would make him famous in the post war period when he developed ‘The family'. A more refined version of this image can be seen in INF 3/1351.

The depiction of the Japanese soldier in this piece is characteristically racist for the propaganda of the time, depicting the soldier as small, monkey like and short sighted. It was useful for Allied propagandists to portray the Japanese in this way and to attribute their early victories to luck and Allied unpre'paredness. In reality the fighting prowess of the Japanese was astonishing in the early part of the pacific war, leading to almost total reversal for the European powers in Asia and posing serious threat to the Australian mainland.