Bloody Saturday (photograph)

Bloody Saturday (血腥的星期六) is the name of a black-and-white photograph that was published widely in September–October 1937 and in less than a month had been seen by more than 136 million viewers. Depicting a Chinese baby crying within the bombed-out ruins of Shanghai South Railway Station, the photograph became known as a cultural icon demonstrating Japanese wartime atrocities in China. Taken a few minutes after a Japanese air attack on civilians during the Battle of Shanghai, Hearst Corporation photographer H. S. "Newsreel" Wong, also known as Wong Hai-Sheng or Wang Xiaoting, did not discover the identity or even the sex of the injured child, whose mother lay dead nearby. One of the most memorable war photographs ever published, and perhaps the most famous newsreel scene of the 1930s, the image stimulated an outpouring of Western anger against Japanese violence in China. Journalist Harold Isaacs called the iconic image "one of the most successful 'propaganda' pieces of all time".

Wong shot footage of the bombed-out South Station with his Eyemo newsreel camera, and he took several still photographs with his Leica. The famous still image, taken from the Leica, is not often referred to by name—rather, its visual elements are described. It has also been called Motherless Chinese Baby,Chinese Baby, and The Baby in the Shanghai Railroad Station. The photograph was denounced by Japanese nationalists who argued that it was staged.

During the Battle of Shanghai, part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese military forces advanced upon and attacked Shanghai, China's most populous city. Wong and other newsreel men, such as Harrison Forman and George Krainukov, captured many images of the fighting, including the gruesome aftermath of an aerial bombing made by three Japanese aircraft against two prominent hotels on Nanking Road on Saturday, August 14, 1937, or "Bloody Saturday". Wong was a Chinese man who owned a camera shop in Shanghai. The National Revolutionary Army began to retreat from the city, leaving a blockade across the Huangpu River. An international group of journalists learned that aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) were to bomb the blockade at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 28, 1937, so many of these gathered atop the Butterfield & Swire building to take photographs of the bombing attack. At 3 pm, no aircraft were to be seen, and most of the newsmen dispersed; all except H. S. "Newsreel" Wong, a cameraman working for Hearst Metrotone News, a newsreel producer. At 4 pm, 16 IJN aircraft appeared, circled, and bombed war refugees at Shanghai's South Station, killing and wounding civilians waiting for an overdue train bound for Hangzhou to the south.

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Wikipedia