Empower U - October 30th - World War II Propaganda Posters

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The talk station at seven thirty one to fifty five
KRCD Talk Station. Try to make it a happy Thursday
if you can get over to the Fort Thomas Military
Community History Museum if you hadn't heard of it like me,
and I apologize to that. My next guest Deanna bini Key.
She's the director of the Fort Thomas Military Community History Museum.
She's gonna being an Empower Youth Seminar tonight beginning at

(00:21):
seven pm. Log in from home or show up at
three hundred Great Oaks Drive for the Empower Youth Seminar's
classroom and get a big eye full and history of
the World War two propaganda posters. Welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Dean.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
It's a pleasure to have you on this morning. Well,
thank you, uh my apologies. As I mentioned in the
intro there the Fort Thomas Military and Community History Museum,
I until this morning did not know there was one
of those. Can you tell my listeners when this got
gone and what people can see there? Before we get
to the propaganda posters seminar information, we are a.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Hidden gym in Fort Thomas. We're located in Tower Park,
which is if you're familiar with Fort Thomas Tower Park
is the park that used to be part of the
VA facility during the wartime. The museum was established in
a display case in nineteen ninety nine. We moved to

(01:16):
our current location in two thousand and nine. We are
getting ready to switch out our World War II exhibits.
For the past four years we have had a tribute
to the more than two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
who processed through Fort Thomas between November of nineteen forty

(01:39):
and June of nineteen forty four.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Oh why.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah. If you had a family member from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana,
or West Virginia and they went were in the Army
or the Army Air Corps, they processed.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Through here, that's amazing. See I learned something, I say,
I learned something in the five caracy more sure every
single day of my life. That is an overwhelming number
of folks. Yes, and you said you distinctly said it
started with a display case. The exhibit's grown quite a
bit since you had a display case, hasn't it, Deenna.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, we are up to more than four thousand artifacts.
We're about two thirds military and a third community based.
For our exhibits, we do have a permanent couple of
permanent military rooms, and then we have a Beverly Hills

(02:40):
tribute room I've about the fire Yeah's. And then we
have two rooms that rotate depending on what exhibit we
choose to put. Next year, those two rooms will be
converted from current World War Two things to one room

(03:00):
will be all about the schools over the years, and
one room will be probably decades of businesses with little
artifacts from various businesses.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
In ten all related to the Fort Thomas community locally.
So rotating stock. I guess it's almost like the Smithsonian.
They have thousands and thousands of stuff behind the scenes
and you've got to bring it out every once in
a while to show people. So a rotating exhibits. The
next time you go to the Fort Thomas Military and
Community History it may be different than the prior time
you've been there. So there's a strong encouragement for folks
to keep going back time and time again. Dan, how

(03:34):
did you get interested in the World War Two? Since
you are doing the World War Two propaganda poster empower
you seminar tonight.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Well, I've always been interested in World War Two. My
father was a veteran of World War Two. He served
with Patton's Third Army in the sixth Armored Division. So
I have a great respect for anything World War Two.
In fact, I was a history was my I've one
of my double majors in college. The museum came about

(04:06):
because I have curated a couple of exhibits over the years.
I am the director now because the previous director had
a health emergency and I said, okay, I'll take over
for a year. That was in twenty seventeen and I'm
still there. Well, I will do it probably another couple

(04:26):
of years because i'll be eighty and I think it's
going to be time to retire.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Oh shush, you're doing what you love. That's what's keeping
you alive. And well, Deanna, let's pause because I want
to get I have a couple of pointed questions to
ask you about the propaganda posters themselves. Will get help
my listeners understand what you're going to be talking about.
It's seven thirty five. We'll take a break and bring
it right back. It's empower You talk station tonight tonight
seven pm. Empower Youoamerica dot org. Your register for the
class World War two propaganda posters brought to us by

(04:53):
the director of the Fort Thomas Military Community Hospital. My
guest today Deana Binnicky. I'm I remember Dean. I apologize.
I had asked for a reading on the pronunciation of
your last name, and Joe had told me and I
wrote a big I over the top of the EI party.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
You remember, remember Muler.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
That's right. But I'll remember Dana Binicky first because I'm
going to go to the Fort Thomas Military and Community
History Museum sometime here soon. But the World War Two
propaganda posters are rather interesting. I think contextually it's really
important that that was the vehicle for our government to
communicate to us, because this is really early on in television.
Hardly anybody had TVs at this period of time, and

(05:40):
there was no Internet, so if you weren't seeing it
on the very hard to find televisions, you weren't going
to get the message. They put these propaganda posters up,
and they dealt with a whole bunch of different subject matters.
It isn't just I want you with Uncle Sam asking
you to enlist in the US Army, but it's also
you know, encouraging loose lips, saying ships you got Rosie,
but are encouraging work, encouraging people to engage in some

(06:03):
measure of belt tightening because the troops need all the
help they can get. So it's it's an interesting phenomenon.
These posters are amazing in terms of the artwork they present.
Do you have any of them that stand out particularly
for you, Deanna?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
We have two hundred and sixty seven of the from
World War One and World War Two. A volunteer from
the museum rescued them when the dav was getting ready
to throw them away. Oh, and so we have them
in stories. There are the ones that I'm going to

(06:40):
talk about tonight are ones that we own, except for
the I want you you know the Uncle Sam. Yeah,
he actually did that poster for World War One and
it was revived and reissued for World War Two. Montgomery

(07:00):
flag used himself as the model, and he did several
Uncle Sam posters in different poses. I'm going to have
that one because I talk about that iconic poster because
you still see it.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Oh, sure, got.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Format and people recognize that poster more than any other poster.
I'm not going to talk about Rosie the River because
we don't own that one. I'm not going to talk
about the Norman Rockwell for freedoms, because we don't own that.
Probably one of my favorites is a war bond poster

(07:40):
that shows a little girl, probably about two years old,
and it simply says to have and to hold and
you see this not quite Gerber baby a little bit
older than that, and then it says, by extra bonds.
Another favorite is one of the James flag James Montgomery

(08:06):
flag posters, which is not politically correct, and I don't
have it up in the exhibit right now because I didn't.
We're not there to invite controversy, and it was a
time when we designed this. Anyway, it's Uncle Sam rolling
up his sleeves and saying, Jap, you're next.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Oh yeah, I remember seeing that one before.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Which was designed after the victory in Europe. But in
a war weary world, we still needed to be motivated
to support our troops, and the troops needed to be
motivated to go to the Pacific and continue the flight
the fight. So I've got We had an exhibit a

(08:56):
few years ago that pulled seventy five posters from both
World War One and World War Two. They were roughly
evenly divided between the Two Wars, which meant I had
about forty close to forty posters for World War Two.
I'm only featuring twenty two of those tonight.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Well, it's going to be a lot with just twenty two.
There's so much history behind these, you know. And I
as we were talking, I went ahead and did an
Internet search on propaganda posters in the United States. You
mentioned sort of the that racist element that might seep through.
I mean, we were in the middle of a war,
but the depictions of Japanese and that stereotypical glasses, the
buck tooth kind of looked that they always depicted them

(09:38):
in movies as obviously that perceived as extremely racist, but
that image appeared on a lot of World War two
posters as well.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
So it's well, the idea of propaganda is to influence
thinking and disseminate information, and the message was we are
the good guys and the enemies of the bad guys,
and those stereotypes that showed up. I've got a poster

(10:08):
that shows an arm holding a knife stabbing through a Bible.
The arm on them, like the cufflink is the Nazi
slastica holding the knife destroying Christianity. That's one that's quite striking.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, those messages really tend to click, especially when you're
in the middle of a war, a war. So we're
gonna learn all about this tonight seven pm. I just
saw another one open Trap Make Happy jap with that
same sort of stereotypical image of a Japanese person talking
about like loose lips sink ships. It's an image of

(10:51):
him with his ear to a keyhole in a door.
So this is just fascinating stuff. It's all on full
display tonight, at least a handful of them relative to
the entire exhibits numbers, and Deanna's going to do a
great job explaining all this to you and walking you
through World War two propaganda posters. Deanna biny Key, it's
been a real pleasure having you on. Keep up the
great work, and thanks for introducing me and a lot

(11:12):
of my listeners perhaps to the for Thomas Military and
Community History Museum, which I'm going to encourage everyone to
check out sometime real soon.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Well check it out next spring, because we're about to
close for this shole. We're not open. We're not open
in December, January, and February because the weather is a factor.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Fair enough, and.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
That's that's our downtime when we break down exhibits and
put new exhibits up.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
I'm glad I said that out loud because somebody might
have shut up next month. Well do you have a
website just for the museum.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well, the best way to get in touch with me
is through our I think there's a website that the
city operates because of the city owns the museum. But
the best way to arrange a private tour, because we
still we'll do private tours between mail and mid December
is Fort Thomas Museum at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Fort Thomas Museum at gmail dot com. That's fantastic. I'm
glad you mentioned private tours as well, Deanna. Well keep
up the great work. Don't retire. We need you over
there doing all this great history work and taking care
of the museum and making Fort Thomas proud. It's been
a pleasure having you on. Good luck with a seminar tonight, folks,
Empower Youamerica dot org. Make sure you register, either show
up in person or login from home. It should be

(12:28):
really fascinating.