Souvenir de Chine

This collection includes 475 photographs, chiefly documenting the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The photographs were likely taken by various Chinese and Japanese military personnel, press photographers, and others, and possibly compiled by a French foreign national in Shanghai. The collection is a visual record of atrocities that were committed during the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.

The photographs were mounted in an album and given to Hollington Tong 董顯光. A graduate of the first class at Columbia University's School of Journalism, Tong served as editor and managing director of the Shanghai English-language newspaper The China Press before Chiang Kai-shek appointed him to supervise foreign propaganda activities as Vice Minister of the Fifth Board of the Military Affairs Commission.

This war related photographs in the collection include:

• The 1937 Battle of Shanghai 淞沪战役 
• The Nanking Massacre 南京大屠杀 
• The First Battle of Shanghai in 1932
• Bombs exploding, fires, rubble, and other destruction
• Japanese and Chinese soldiers, including women
• American and British soldiers
• Artillery, tanks, heavy machine guns, aircraft, and naval vessels, including the USS Augusta and unidentified British ships
• Soldiers in combat and in hospital
• Military and civilian casualties, corpses, and human remains

Also included are images of: 

• A Chinese wedding procession
• Chiang Kai-shek and his wife 
• A bird’s-eye view of Nanking Road
• Foreign concessions in Shanghai