Seventy-four years ago, as Darwin reeled from the largest single attack mounted on Australian soil, a wave of fear about an imminent invasion by Japanese forces swept the Top End.

But away from the bombings and battlefields of World War II, another sort of battle was taking place over people's hearts, minds and morale.

"One saying that gets used a lot is 'the first casualty of war is truth'," Jared Archibald, curator of history at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), told 105.7 ABC Darwin.

"That's very much what propaganda is about."

Displayed for the anniversary of the bombing of Darwin, Mr Archibald's latest curation includes 10 images unearthed from the museum's archives showing both sides of the Japanese-Australian wartime conflict.

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Five of the images are brilliantly colourful and were created for the Japanese war effort during WWII, most likely by the country's ministry of information, and often dropped as pamphlets into Australian frontlines.

"They're very clever. Some play on words and have colourful designs," Mr Archibald said.

"Some we didn't put on display are pornographic. They used anything they could."

Others, including a piece depicting a wounded Australian soldier and an American solider holding a young girl in garters, aimed to develop a distrust in Australia's allies, Mr Archibald explained.

"They say, 'you're up in New Guinea, you're losing your mate, you've been wounded, all while your American allies are taking your women in Australia'."

The 'insidious' nature of war propaganda

The anniversary exhibition's other five images are black and white and display another side of WWII propaganda likely created by Australia's wartime government propagandists.

"Some are purely the prime minister saying, 'We've had some bad things happen, if you don't work, if you don't fight ... we are going to have bad times'," Mr Archibald said.

But another poster specifically depicting the Japanese can be described as "hateful", Mr Archibald said.

"It's quite bad. It uses terms and descriptions that are true and then twisted at the end to make you think these people were always our enemies — and they weren't. Japanese in World War I were our allies.

The Australian War Memorial also holds WWII propaganda in its collection, including this Australian poster referring to the threat of Japanese invasion.

"Most propaganda that's trying to make you think something uses truth and then twists it. That's where it's insidious.

"Even though that [end conclusion] might not be true, it's about making somebody think [a certain way] and lower morale.

"It tries to soften you and change the way you're thinking."

But Mr Archibald said that, apart from the problematic reflections gained from both sides of the exhibition's wartime propaganda, it does not mean propaganda was always an insidious thing.

"Propaganda as we've come to know — it is the misinformation or hateful things that make us think bad things about certain people or way of life," he said.

"Propaganda in the true sense of the word is information that is disseminated to try and make a group or a nation think in a certain way.

"That could be something as simple as 'slip slop slap'. We could call that propaganda, and it's not bad.

"It's asking you to think about what you're doing and do something for you."

Mr Archibald's collection is being displayed at the Defence of Darwin Experience at East Point from February 19.