Minnesota pawn shop debunks claims it has photos of Nanjing massacre

Minnesota pawn shop debunks claims it has photos of Nanjing massacre


Evan Kail, the owner of St. Louis Park Gold & Silver who goes by the online name "Pawn Man", posted a video on TikTok on 31 August claiming to have discovered long-lost photographs taken during the six-week massacre in which at least 200,000 Chinese civilians were killed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Kail's video went viral overnight, garnering over 30 million views and attracting international attention for what many believed to be a major historical revelation.To get more news about nanjing massacre tiktok photos, you can visit shine news official website.

In NextShark's previous article on the photos, we pointed out that details of the album did not match Kail's claims that the images were from Nanjing. Upon closer examination, the original owner of the album, Leslie Guy Allen, Jr, sailed on the U.S.S. Augusta during World War II. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, the Augusta was not in Nanjing at the time of the massacre, but in Shanghai on 12 December, nearly 300 kilometres away, the day before the massacre began.
There were no further updates on the photos until Kail posted a video on his YouTube channel on 15 September, detailing both the stress and support he claims to have experienced while working on the album.

Because of these trolls, especially this one assclown, nobody will go near this thing now," Kail claims in the video update. "I can't get anybody to f*cking look at it. Every person in Minnesota that I had lined up that had any kind of credentials ghosted me. They want nothing to do with it because of the controversy.

An article published by The New Yorker on Tuesday revealed that the photos Kail thought were from Nanjing - formerly known as Nanking - were captioned "Nanking Road" in the album. Kail had mistaken Nanking Road, now Nanjing Road, for the city, when in fact it refers to a street in Shanghai.

Timothy Brook, a professor specialising in Chinese history during the Japanese occupation, examined the photographs provided by Kail and stated that "as far as I can tell, none of these photographs are from Nanjing".
The way the sailor has presented these images exoticizes Asia," Brook said. "He treats China and Japan as places of war and violence and torture. That's not to say the photographs aren't true, but they need to be properly contextualised.

"My mistake was to cry wolf," Kail told The New Yorker. "I should have been more careful."

"Even if the whole book turns out to be fake, it started a productive conversation. I accidentally educated so many people about the subject.

As for the fate of the album, Kail wrote in an email to NextShark: "I am in the process of donating the book to China. I am waiting for the embassy to finalise the transfer with my lawyer".