Unverified massacre photos may end up back in Nanjing

The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Jiangsu province has contacted a man in the United States to confirm the authenticity of some photos allegedly showing the brutality of the events that took place in East China in December 1937.

Evan Kail, a pawnshop owner in the US state of Minnesota, posted on social media on Thursday that a customer asked him to help sell an album with some photos documenting atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China during World War II.

What was documented in the photo album made him "scream", Kail said, adding that a museum or other authority should own the photos and he would not sell them to private collectors or give them to the Japanese government.

The video he posted shows him turning the pages of what seems to be a scrapbook made by a World War II soldier just before the start of the war. He then goes on to show photographs taken by the soldier in China, which gets more "war-related" as the timeline progresses.

He also posted that he received many comments, and as the video gained popularity, a number of people overseas began their own research on the topic.

Kail and the alleged new evidence of the massacre also made for a hot trending topic on Chinese social media.

The Nanjing Massacre took place when the Japanese army captured the then-national capital in late 1937. Over six weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed.

However, none of the photos in the Minnesota pawnshop have been verified by a museum or historical society.

The political information office of the Consulate General of China in Chicago said on Thursday that it has been trying to contact Kail to verify the photos.

A worker from the memorial hall said that the solemn facility has very strict procedures for verifying the authenticity of cultural relics, while another worker surnamed Yang confirmed that the hall has contacted Kail to check the authenticity of the photos.

Tang Kai, a member of the Association for the Study of the History of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, said that many of the photos in the album posted by Kail are news photos that had been previously published.

"A lot of them were taken before Japan's invasion of China," he said. "Instead of being snapped by a private soldier, the album seems more like a collection of war photos."

Kail said in a video that he was happy that more people have learned about the history of World War II, whether the photos are authentic or not.

Guo Jun contributed to this story.