JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I just located a rare and emotional document on the Japanese massacre of Chinese soldiers and civilians at Jinan (“Tsinan”), Shandong (“Shantung”), China. It forms part of the long pre-Sino-Japanese War (of 1937-1945), and though it is often described as an “incident” it was far more than that, as more than 6,000 soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army of China and civilians were killed, with many thousands more wounded, done in by the Imperial Army of Japan, which suffered only 200 casualties (most of these being wounded).

I’ve scanned as much of this document as I could without damaging the pamphlet and reproduced those three pages below–it isn’t quite half of the document, but it does give the main thrust of it, and certainly displays the writer’s outrage and frustration.  Brutish Massacre by Japanese Forces at Tsinan was written by Y.S. Chen of the National Labor University, Kiangwan, Shanghai, China, and was printed from typed sheets via an offset process of some sort and published not later than June 28, 1928.  My copy is deaccessioned from the Library of Congress, where the documents division received it on June 28, 1928, which means it was probably printed within weeks of the massacre. There is only one copy of this document located in WorldCat (at Northwestern University), and there are no hits on the title in various online searches.