Description
The Remember Dec. 7th! poster
Remember Dec. 7th! was painted by Allen Saalburg and issued in 1942 by the Office of War Information as OWI Poster No. 14, printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office. A 48-star flag, burned and torn, flies at half-mast from a tall white pole while black smoke rolls across a clear Hawaiian sky. Above it runs a line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: …we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…
The poster asked Americans to remember the morning of 7 December 1941, when Japanese carrier aircraft attacked the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and more than 2,400 Americans were killed. There are no ships, planes or soldiers in the picture. Saalburg let the flag and the smoke carry the whole story, and borrowed Lincoln’s promise to the dead of 1863 for the dead of 1941.
Allen Russell Saalburg (1899–1987) was a New York painter and muralist who had painted murals for the Works Progress Administration before the war. The poster was printed in more than one size, and copies are held by the Library of Congress and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Read the full history of the poster.
Restored edition
Restored from a photograph of an original 1942 print. The fold lines, creases, stains and wear were removed and the colour of the sky, smoke and flag brought back, while the lettering is kept from the original. Drag the before and after slider below to compare.
Sizes and options
- Paper print: 11.7 × 16.5 in, 20 × 28 in or 23.4 × 33.1 in
- Framed print: 12 × 17 in, 20 × 28 in or 23 × 33 in, in a black, white or natural wood frame, ready to hang
Printed to order in the USA on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Art paper. Free Standard shipping to the US. Compare the print sizes.
More posters
See Dish It Out With the Navy, or browse the World War II collection.
