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Released in March, 1944, "Vs. Malaria Mike" is one of the cartoons in the "Private SNAFU" series directed by Chuck Jones, voiced by Mel Blanc, and produced by Warner Brothers. It was likely written by Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. The cartoon features Private Snafu facing a malariatransmitting mosquito, and was part of an awareness campaign aimed at informing troops about the dangers posed by the insects. During the Pacific War, the lack of effective mosquito control measures caused malaria to reach epidemic status. Early in the war, it was estimated that malaria caused eight to ten times as many casualties than the battlefield. In 1943, James C. Magee, Surgeon General of the United States Army, created special units to plan and carry out malaria control. The same year, Douglas MacArthur issued orders concerning malaria control measures. Among them was raising the shipping priority of antimalaria supplies, providing troops with prophylactic drugs (quinine and atabrine) and mosquito repellents, and training troops in the importance of malaria. Soldiers were reluctant to take antimalarials (particularly Atabrine, which had worse sideeffects than quinine) because of the sideeffects, and Private SNAFU vs. Malaria Mike was an attempt to challenge this aversion.

Private Snafu is the title character of a series of blackandwhite American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character's name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up". (The cleanedup version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was "Situation Normal: All Fouled Up".)

Motion picture films don't last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. For almost two decades, we've worked to collect, scan and preserve the world as it was captured on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies including home movies, industrial films, and other nonfiction. If you have endangered films you'd like to have scanned, or wish to donate celluloid to Periscope Film so that we can share them with the world, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us via the weblink below.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com