Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

China by Harold J. Timperly. Timperly, an Australian national, was a correspondent ofBritain’s Manchester Guardian in Shanghai. His book, published in London and New York inJuly 1938, was the first monograph that accused the Japanese of atrocities in Nanking.Although he recounted his stories allegedly as an eyewitness, again, careful reading did notconvince me of the authenticity of his stories.Further investigation of these and other source materials led me to an importantdiscovery. Timperly’s What War Means contains a “Memorandum” by an anonymous writer,whose real identity was Miner S. Bates, then a missionary as well as a University of Nankingprofessor. This “Memorandum” says that the record of burial activities inside and outside theNanking walls was a solid proof of the killing of 40,000 unarmed people, of whomnon-combatants comprised nearly 30 percent. When this “Memorandum” was reprinted infour English-language sources published in China, however, this passage was not included.The same is true of the Chinese translation of Timperly’s book.These questions and discoveries prompted me to write ‘Nankin gyakusatsu’ no tetteikenshō [An Exhaustive Study of “Nanking Massacre”] in 1998. It was published, however,merely to refute the contentions of the so-called “great massacre school” in the controversyover the alleged Rape of Nanking, and not to depict the true picture of the entire incident.Neither was its purpose to answer those questions concerning the burial record or missingpassage in Bate’s “Memorandum” in the Chinese edition of Timperly’s book as well as in othersources.Then, new source materials on the alleged Rape of Nanking were unearthed in 2001,and these discoveries led to some new findings.First, it is revealed that, Timperly, who penned the first monograph accusing theJapanese army of committing atrocities, was an adviser to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s[Guomindang (GMD)] central propaganda bureau. i This bureau was in charge of press andspeech censorshipcontrol as well as propaganda. One will note that the Chinese CommunistParty (CCP) today has a section that performs the same functions.Second, Zeng Xubai, then chief of the international propaganda division of the GMDcentral propaganda bureau, said in his autobiography (vol. I, p. 201) that the centralpropaganda bureau funded the publication of Timperly’s What War Means and Lewis S. C.Smythe’s War Damages in the Nanking Area. iiThird, Bates, who contributed his “Memorandum” to Timperly’s book underanonymity, was an adviser to the GMD government, according to a contemporary newspaperarticle. Also, the China Monthly revealed that the wife of George A. Fitch, who also wrote apart of Timperly’s What War Means, was a close friend of Chiang Kai-shek’s wife. iiiFourth, Bates’s own record says that he handed his “report” to an Americancorrespondent who was on his way to Shanghai from Nanking prior to the latter’s departure. ivFifth, the “report” by Bates had a striking resemblance to the articles published by theChicago Daily News on December 15 and the New York Times on December 18. (Recentresearch shows that the contents of Bates’ “report” are far from truthful. v )Sixth, a recently created database of various contemporary sources on the allegedJapanese atrocities substantiated that most cases of murder recorded by these sources werehearsays, and that the only witnessed case of murder was the one that was reported on January9, 1938, which was actually a case of “lawful execution.” (See pp. 28 - 35, Chapter 1.) viThese findings convinced me to speculate that there is the existence ofbehind-the-scene maneuvering in the creation of the standard story of the Rape of Nanking.4