Walt Disney With Staff Members of Chemical Warfare Service

Walt Disney With Staff Members of Chemical Warfare Service, January 1942, meeting to discuss a Mickey Mouse gas mask for children. From left Col. George J. B. Fisher, Col, Maurice Barker, Walt Disney, General Porter, and General English. Note picture of mask, left background. 

The CWS first planned a civilian gas mask in 1937. By 1940 the service had decided that the design of the Zapon-type mask, as it was called, was not satisfactory, and had replaced it by another of rubberized fabric. At the request of the Office of Civilian Defense, the service redesigned this gas mask with its snout-type canister in five sizes for civilian use and obtained permission to produce it with laminated and, later, sheet rubber 

At the request of the Office of Civilian Defense late in 1941, the CWS-MIT Development Laboratory devised a collective protector for civilian air raid shelters. Under power operation it would protect adequately 40 to 50 persons when hand-operated, 20 to 25 people. The service constructed a 

CWTC Item 132, Standardization of Large Field Collective Protector, 12 Mar 40. 

Japanese collective protectors were similar to those used by European nations and the United States. An ingenious model capable of purifying air for forty persons derived the power for pumping the bellows from a geared bicycle mechanism.  

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