A collector in Minnesota says he has found previously unseen photos of the “Rape of Nanjing,” the 1937 assault by the Japanese Imperial Army against the Chinese city of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The incident, also known as the Massacre of Nanjing, is notorious in part because so few records of it exist, mostly compiled by a few international civilians in the citys Safety Zone.
Evan Kail, posting on TikTok as Pawn Man, shared a video of the photo album and asked his followers for help, saying a museum should take it.
Kail says the book appears to have belonged to a member of the U.S. military stationed in Southeast Asia shortly before World War II. After turning several pages, the war ramps up, and Kail says he cant show any more beyond that point.
“I got that book on Monday, and I opened it up, and I got beyond that page, and I screamed,” he said. The photos “are worse than anything Ive seen on the internet.”nnThe disturbing photos were so graphic he could not show them on TikTok, and posted some to Twitter instead. They show piles of bodies, torture including “death of a thousand cuts,” and various gruesome forms of execution.
But some social media historians are skeptical. A few of the photos seen in the book have previously been published, and others may be older than 1937.
Kail said he has no intention of selling the book to a private collector, and doesnt want to return it to the family who brought it to him, because he believes “these photos need to be seen and documented and preserved.”
