Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

Photo GPhoto G: POW camp sign board shown in photographs—from a photograph by HayashiTsuneo (left) and a photograph by Fudō Kenji (right).Photos D and E—still images of the motion film. Among Inagaki’s records is also acamera photograph—Photo F—which shows the same location. Judging from the outlookof the sign board reading “POW camp” in Japanese as well as mountains in the back oneach of Fudō’s photograph as well as on Inagaki’s (Photo G), they obviously captured anidentical location. Inagaki’s record pinpointed this location as Xiaqilinmen.Photo D depicts a building that may have accommodated the POWs. On Photo E,a considerable number of men were seen moving up and down. One can even see aJapanese soldier lying on the ground on Photo F. It is extremely difficult to associatethese scenes with the alleged indiscriminate and wholesale massacre of POWs. As thesephotos show, the Chinese POWs far outnumbered the Japanese soldiers supervising them.In reality, some POWs escaped from the camp after dusk by capitalizing on the loosesecurity due to the lack of Japanese men watching over them. Given such a situation, ifthe alleged massacre of POWs had occurred day by day, the POWs would have riotedagainst the Japanese. But the impression one may obtain from these photographs is that a213