The following four photographs found in Chang's book are of dubious provenance. Photograph A bears the following caption: "The Japanese bound the wrists of young men in the city and loaded many of them onto trucks, where they were transported to the outskirts of Nanking for mass execution (Mainchi Shimbun)." However, it is impossible to verify the source.

Photograph A

The caption for Photograph B reads, "Beheadings by sword were popular in Nanking. Here the camera captures the moment of a victim's decapitation (New China News Agency)." It is very difficult to decapitate someone from a crouching position. Furthermore, the "victim" is not actually shown being decapitated. In any case, no source is listed.

Photograph B

Photograph C bears the following caption: "The Japanese bound this young woman to a chair for repeated attack (New China News Agency)." The accusation is preposterous. If it is possible to use methods like this to justify despising the people of a particular nation, then it is also possible to collect pornographic photographs from all over the world and blame Americans for them -- or Chinese, for that matter.

Photograph C

We will not reproduce Photograph D in this book, due to its gruesome nature. It shows a woman with her trousers pulled down, and her upper garments pulled up over her head. The lower half of her body has been stripped naked, and an object resembling a stick is protruding from her genitals. There is no precedent for such macabre deeds as this in Japan, but they were often perpetrated by the Chinese.

For example, on July 29, 1937, three weeks after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, most of the Japanese residents of Tongzhou were massacred by Chinese -- members of the "Peace Preservation Corps." In that massacre, an account of which we have provided in Chapter Four, more than 200 Japanese lost their lives. Japanese women were subjected to acts of unspeakable brutality identical to that described above. By ascribing the ghastly deed done to the victim in Photograph D, the Chinese were acting true to form -- blaming the Japanese for crimes that they themselves had committed.

Nevertheless, Chang's efforts to have this photograph placed in the library of every American school outstep the bounds of rational thinking. Having examined all 34 photographs in The Rape of Nanking, we have reached the conclusion that not one of them constitutes direct proof of a massacre in Nanking, Iris Chang's claims notwithstanding.