1942.07.09 “Loose Lips”
by Silas Melvin Olson (1903-1974)
8.5 x 11 in., pencil on stationary
Coppola Collection
From Mary Jane LaVigne: Olson moved with his mother and sisters to Minneapolis as a child. His sister was my grandmother. He was a graduate of Minneapolis South High School. He began drawing as a young man and produced a number of left leaning cartoons during WWI and into the 1920s, mocking the Minneapolis police and prohibition era social behavior. A few were printed in the Minneapolis Tribune. Yours is the first from the WWII era I have seen.
He made a living as a cake decorator, according to family lore. He had one child, Thomas “Tommy” Olson, who’s anodyne name has made him impossible to track.
The pencil draft is a criticism of the US News commentators providing too much critical information about the military in its public broadcasts.
During World War II, “loose lips sink ships” was more than just a slogan. It represented a widespread concern that the media could inadvertently leak critical information that might be intercepted by the Axis powers.
By 1942, with the U.S. newly engaged in the war, tensions ran high about press freedom vs. national security. Journalists and radio broadcasters were criticized heavily for revealing too much about military operations, weapons development, troop movements, and manufacturing output. Even FDR’s administration clamped down and created the Office of Censorship (Dec. 1941) to control information leaving the country.
In June of 1942, as the war was winding up, this concern showed up in a few public ways, starting with the Pearl Harbor investigations. There was criticism that public information about vulnerabilities had been available in the press before the attack. After the Battle of Midway (June 1942), media outlets wanted to report the use of codebreaking, which was highly classified and crucial to the win. The Navy censored those details. And the Chicago Tribune incident (June 1942), where the newspaper published a story implying the US had prior knowledge of Japanese plans, based on codebreaking, causing outrage and calls for prosecution under the Espionage Act.
The pencil drawing is not dated, but the paper used was a recycled bit of correspondence to Silas from his bank, revealing his Minneapolis address, dated July 9, 1942. This piece of paper could have been sitting around for months, of course.
