Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

RON-YY’s editors copied this error because its caption to Photo 120 reads “During the firstfew days of Japanese occupation, about 200,000 refugees, including many disarmedChinese soldiers, fled into the Safety Zone.”Photo 122 Photo 120Photo 121Photo 120: RON-YY’s caption identifies this location as the “safety zone.” “Magee’sTestament” also includes this clip.Photo 121: A clip in “Magee’s Testament.”Photo 122: RON-YY, p. 204.There are other similar instances of images taken in Shanghai being misused asthose that depict the scenes of Nanking. RON-YY, for example, includes threephotographs as shown in Photo 122 with a caption “Ruins and damaged building left by theJapanese Army arson.” A 1938 Japanese publication entitled Chūshi no tenbō [Prospectof central China], however, contains photographs that capture the same locations, whichwere all in Shanghai—the uppermost one was a building in Dachangzhen in northernShanghai, the one immediately underneath was a building of the Shanghai municipalgovernment, and the image on the lower right shows pillboxes reinforced with sandbags inZhabei.193