1942 Detroit Times Pictorial Map of the World During World War II

This is a January 4, 1942 Detroit Times pictorial map of the world during World War II. Times artists chose not to draw the hemispheres in the traditional eastern/western configuration, but instead illustrates the Pacific theater of war on the left and the European/African/Atlantic theaters on the right.

The Pacific Theater

The map on the left details the situation in the Pacific at the beginning of January 1942. Less than a month before this map was published, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war - two years after it began in Europe and over four years after all-out war broke out in Asia. American flags mark the United States, Hawaii, and the Philippines (a U.S. possession). Flags also mark Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, and New Caledonia. The Japanese flag is planted in areas occupied by Japan, which are further reinforced by red shading. These include Korea (which Japan held since 1910), Manchukuo (a Japanese puppet state established in 1932), eastern China, all of Southeast Asia, and the Japanese mandates in the Caroline, Mariana and Marshall Islands. Small illustrations of battleships, aircraft carriers, and planes traverse the Pacific. Insets along the bottom border focus on Southeast Asia, distances across the Pacific from San Francisco to Manila and Tokyo, and the Philippines. Storm clouds gather along the borders and fighter planes occupy the upper and lower left.

The European/African/Atlantic theaters

Warfare consumed Europe, northern Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean by the beginning of 1942. German submarines terrorized both military and civilian shipping in the Atlantic since 1939, a fact highlighted by an inset in the upper left. Axis conquests are shaded red and Allied territory pink. Territory in gray (southern France and most of West Africa) represents Vichy France. Neutral countries are white. Insets along the bottom border focus on Libya, where Rommel and the Afrika Korps were fighting the British, and the Eastern Front, the only active fighting in Europe after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn by Detroit Times staff artists and published in the January 4, 1942 edition of the Detroit Times. This piece is uncatalogued in OCLC and we are aware of only one other surviving example in private hands, although, given the volume printed, it is likely that others exist.