Design for Death is a 1948 American documentary film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was based on a shorter U.S. Army training film, Our Job in Japan, that had been produced in 1945-1946 for the soldiers occupying Japan after World War II. Both films dealt with Japanese culture and the origins of the war.Following the war, Peter Rathvon at RKO, who had seen Our Job in Japan during his own military service, decided to produce a commercial version of the film.