Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

In one case a [Communist] Party member raped the female members of alandowner’s family and then mutilated them by cutting off their breasts . . . .One bandit gang had captured a young Communist, . . . The bandit chiefordered him to be cut in half. The chief was later caught, and beaten todeath by the Communist land reform team leader, who had been a friend ofthe man who had been killed. The team leader then cut out the chief’sheart and ate it to demonstrate his revenge. (p. 167)Readers should note that these quoted passages recount the events that transpired in1949-50.Another source that narrates similar acts of cruelties in China is Hungry Ghosts:Mao’s Secret Famine by Jasper Becker. The following episode included in this bookhappened during the time of the “Great Leap Forward,” which reportedly starved 30 millionpeople to death in China:Guo Shouli, head of the militia of Nayuan Brigade in Liji commune, Gushicounty, beat 110 militiamen, 11 of whom were left permanently disabledand 6 of whom died . . . A common form of punishment was for cadres todrag people along by their hair. . . . The peasants tried to escape this formof cruelty by shaving off all their hair but then the cadres began to cut off theears of their victims. In the Daluying production brigade in Fan Hucommune, Xixian county, cadres hacked off the ears of seventeen people.A 20-year-old girl, Huang Xiu Lian, who was president of the commune’sWomen’s Association, cut off the ears of four people, one of whom laterdied. Elsewhere women were humiliated by having sticks inserted intotheir genitals. . . .The Party Secretary of Qisi commune in Gushi county,Jiang Xue Zhong, is said to have invented a method of boiling human fleshto turn it into fertilizer . . . Subsequent investigations revealed that he hadboiled at least twenty corpses . . . . When the collective canteen ran out ofgrain, some began slaughtering the remaining livestock. . . . Lu Xianwendenounced this as “sabotage of production” . . . . Some had their nosespierced and were pulled through the nostrils. They were then forced to pulla plough in the field like an ox. . . . That winter, cannibalism becamewidespread. Generally, the villagers ate the flesh of corpses, especiallythose of children. . . . In Gushi county, in 1960, the authorities listed 200cases of corpses being eaten and charged those arrested with the crime of‘destroying corpses.’ (pp. 115-19)If someone uses the descriptions in this quote, which recounts events in Chinaduring the 1960s, as captions for Photos O, P, 22, 103, and 104, viewers may well acceptthe scenes depicted in these photographs as those that actually happened at that time.Publications of the “great massacre school” tend to contain passages that illustratethe savage nature of the Japanese soldiers. For example, one can find the followingpassages in RON-I:173