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blue bits. red rocks.
Wednesday 30 January 2008

By late 1943, however, FDR’s administration and the military had completely changed their minds. Americans, they decided, had by then become too complacent about the war. Much of the war news had been positive, and the government was worried about increasing work absenteeism. What Americans needed, thought the state, was a display of military sacrifice; the Pentagon quickly released hundreds of images of dead soldiers to remind civilians that the war remained a deadly business still to be decided. As it happens, many publications refused to publish the images; their editors feared such pictures would “disturb” readers. However, some of the country’s largest circulation periodicals, such as Life magazine, did run them, and they were widely seen. Flag-Draped Memories: The strange history of war-death imagery

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