The Nanking Atrocity: Still and Moving Images 1937–1944

Gary Evans

doi:10.17645/mac.v2i2.145

Abstract

This manuscript investigates the facts of publication of the images of the Nanking Atrocity (December 1937–January 1938) in LIFE and LOOK magazines, two widely read United States publications, as well as the Nanking atrocity film clips that circulated to millions more in American and Canadian newsreels some years later. The publishers of these images were continuing the art of manipulation of public opinion through multimodal visual media, aiming them especially at the less educated mass public. The text attempts to describe these brutal images in their historical context. Viewing and understanding the underlying racial context and emotive impact of these images may be useful adjuncts to future students of World War II. If it is difficult to assert how much these severe images changed public opinion, one can appreciate how the emerging visual culture was transforming the way that modern societies communicate with and direct their citizens' thoughts.

Highlights

In 2008, the seventieth anniversary of the Nanking Atrocity passed with limited international interest in the event that marked Japan's depredations in the Chinese capital city of Nanking (Nanjing) from December 1937 through January 1938
This study will investigate the facts of publication of the images from Nanking in the weeks and months following the event, in LIFE and LOOK magazines, two new United States photograph journals competing with each other and with the newsreels
In July 1944 Fortress Japan gave an account of the Allied advance on beleaguered Japan, using footage of dead Japanese soldiers to demonstrate that the Allied drive would break Japan's militaristic spirit: "And so, a nation which has ever held life cheap, prepares to practice once again its ancient arts of death..." Tom Daly, the editor, defended these Asia films, noting that they did not substitute emotional racism for a true thing nor did they deny the Japanese were intelligent people

Summary

Introduction

In 2008, the seventieth anniversary of the Nanking Atrocity passed with limited international interest in the event that marked Japan's depredations in the Chinese capital city of Nanking (Nanjing) from December 1937 through January 1938. This study will investigate the facts of publication of the images from Nanking in the weeks and months following the event, in LIFE and LOOK magazines, two new United States photograph journals competing with each other and with the newsreels. They claimed a readership of seventeen million and one million respectively. If one American epithet referred to the Japanese racially as "buck-toothed," Canadians saw Chinese-staged (black propaganda) images of Japanese soldiers attacking women and bayonetting a baby For both countries, the newsreels' use of gruesome Nanking images accompanied by a cascade of explanatory verbiage and moral invective reflected an informational world where news was as much about emotional imagery as about fact. If employed judiciously and in context, they may lead new generations of students of World War II to grasp the impact of visual imagery on mass populations

Background

American Newsreels and Nanking

Canadian Newsreels and Asia

Japanese Propaganda and the Nanking Atrocity

Findings

Conclusion