I Want You
The famous recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing directly at the viewer and stating “I want you for the US Army” actually dated from 1917, when the American Expeditionary Force was gearing up to go to France. Based on a British recruiting poster from earlier in World War I it returned to use in the Second World War and has been used by the US Army many times since. But it was far from the only recruiting poster in the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack posters which depicted the American flag, battered but still flying, exhorted Americans to Remember Pearl Harbor. Later posters tried to attract attention to special disciplines required by the military, recruiting for the SeaBees, Army Nurses, Submarines, Aviation, and so forth.
Many of these military disciplines required their members to be volunteers, and thus did not fill their ranks through the use of the general draft which fed the Army’s ranks throughout the war. Many also had higher academic and physical fitness standards than those of the draft, and thus required more focused recruitment efforts.
The US Coast Guard produced recruiting posters which were addressed specifically to owner-operators of small boats, implying the need for their expertise in the smaller service. The US Navy prepared a poster which depicted a sailor preparing to attack an enemy submarine, another US Navy poster showed a young woman proudly proclaiming that her man had joined the submarine service.
All of the branches of the military were competing for the same manpower, and all used methods of attracting their attention which went beyond posters. Full length motion pictures which focused on the contributions of certain parts of the military; bombardiers, PT boat squadrons, Army Rangers, B-24 pilots (starring Jimmy Stewart, himself a bomber pilot) and many more were used as recruiting vehicles, with military representatives on hand in the theater after the show to close the deal.