World War II is now over fifty years in the past. For animation fans, those days can be relived every time a retrospective screening of wartime cartoons is held. There seems to be a campus or a fine-arts program every few years in most cities. It's an opportunity to see Confusions of a Nutzy Spy, Der Fuehrer's Face, Tokio Jokio, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, You're a Sap, Mr. Jap, and those other classics that grow more embarrassing as wartime memories fade.
The Japanese also made many propaganda cartoons, including one notable 37-minute featurette and a 74-minute feature. Unlike the American films, these have not been continuously available over the past half-century. Due to wartime Japan's own cannibalizing of film prints to reuse the film stock, and the destruction by the American Occupation authorities of all propaganda materials that could be found, most of the wartime cartoons were thought to no longer exist. However, the earlier film has been preserved by Tokyo's National Film Center while at least one print of the feature also survived. Today, thanks to the home-video in Japan, the latter is available to a much larger audience than ever saw the original film. It is too primitive to be of much interest to the fans of modern action-adventure Japanese anime, but it is fascinating to anyone with a serious interest in World War II propaganda art and animation, and in the evolution of anime.
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.7/articles/patten1.7.html