The fourth photograph we will examine is this Photograph. The caption reads as follows: "Blindfolded and propped on two sticks, this poor man served as the living target for a Japanese officer's sword practice. Here an infantryman finishes the job with bayonet thrusts that continue even after the victim's death (Politburo of Military Committee, Taipei)."

This same photograph also appears in a Chinese book, also printed in Japan, about the Second Sino-Japanese War. The caption reads, "The Japanese use the body of a Chinese for bayoneting practice near Tianjin in September 1937." Which is it? Nanking or Tianjin? Obviously, with no specific evidence in any direction, the photo can be applied to nearly any setting. Even if we were to place credence in this caption, it would therefore clearly have nothing to do with the Nanking Incident.

Furthermore, there is, of course, no indication of who took this photograph, or when and where it was actually taken. There is a description of photographs of this ilk in Hodo Sensen (The Intelligence Front) written by Mabuchi Itsuo, who served as head of the Army's Press Section, and published by Kaizosha in 1941.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Jiang government disseminated photographic propaganda showing Japanese soldiers using Chinese prisoners of war for bayoneting practice. These photographs incited public opinion against Japan and toward China. But on p. 455 of the January, 1939, issue of Lowdown, an American magazine, this practice was exposed, as follows:

The history of that one picture is interesting, in that it throws light on the history of most such pictures. It was first placed on sale, as a post card, in Shanghai in 1919. At that time it was presented as a propaganda against one of the war lords who was ravaging an interior province. A year or so later it was brought out again depicting Communist Chinese officers torturing a Chinese prisoner of one of the northern provinces. It did not rest for long, as it was soon hauled out again as propaganda against the Japanese when they went into Manchuria. When the Manchurian crisis had ceased to be news it was put away only to be unearthed again to illustrate the atrocities committed by the Chinese Soviets when Chiang Kai-shek was attempting to wipe out the Chinese Red Army in 1934.

In its most recent appearance it was used for the customary purpose of enlisting American sympathies -- and arousing anti-Japanese sentiment in this country.