Bloody Saturday ( photograph ) Bloody Saturday is the name of a black - and - white photograph that was published widely in September – October 1937 and in less than a month had been seen by more than 136 million viewers . Depicting a Chinese baby crying within the bombed - out ruins of Shanghai South Railway Station , the photograph became known as a cultural icon demonstrating Japanese wartime atrocities in China . Taken a few minutes after a Japanese air attack on civilians during the Battle of Shanghai , Hearst Corporation photographer H . S . " Newsreel " Wong , also known as Wong Hai - Sheng or Wang Xiaoting , did not discover the identity or even the sex of the injured child , whose mother lay dead nearby . One of the most memorable war photographs ever published , and perhaps the most famous newsreel scene of the 1930s , the image stimulated an outpouring of Western anger against Japanese violence in China . Journalist Harold Isaacs called the iconic image " one of the most successful ' propaganda ' pieces of all time " . Wong shot footage of the bombed - out South Station with his Eyemo newsreel camera , and he took several still photographs with his Leica . The famous still image , taken from the Leica , is not often referred to by name — rather , its visual elements are described . It has also been called " Motherless Chinese Baby " , " Chinese Baby " , and " The Baby in the Shanghai Railroad Station " . The photograph was denounced by Japanese nationalists who argued that it was staged . Capturing the image . During the Battle of Shanghai , part of the Second Sino - Japanese War , Japanese military forces advanced upon and attacked Shanghai , China ' s most populous city . Wong and other newsreel men , such as Harrison Forman and George Krainukov , captured many images of the fighting , including the gruesome aftermath of an aerial bombing made by three Japanese aircraft against two prominent hotels on Nanking Road on Saturday , August 14 , 1937 , called " Bloody Saturday " . Wong was a Chinese man who owned a camera shop in Shanghai . The National Revolutionary Army began to retreat from the city , leaving a blockade across the Huangpu River . An international group of journalists learned that aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy ( IJN ) were to bomb the blockade at 2 pm on Saturday , August 28 , 1937 , so many of these gathered atop the Butterfield & Swire building to take photographs of the bombing attack . At 3 pm , no aircraft were to be seen , and most of the newsmen dispersed ; all except H . S . " Newsreel " Wong , a cameraman working for Hearst Metrotone News , a newsreel producer . At 4 pm , 16 IJN aircraft appeared , circled , and bombed war refugees at Shanghai ' s South Station , killing and wounding civilians waiting for an overdue train bound for Hangzhou to the south . Wong descended from the rooftop to the street , where he got into his car and drove quickly toward the ruined railway station . When he arrived , he noted carnage and confusion : " It was a horrible sight . People were still trying to get up . Dead and injured lay strewn across the tracks and platform . Limbs lay all over the place . Only my work helped me forget what I was seeing . I stopped to reload my camera . I noticed that my shoes were soaked with blood . I walked across the railway tracks , and made many long scenes with the burning overhead bridge in the background . Then I saw a man pick up a baby from the tracks and carry him to the platform . He went back to get another badly injured child . The mother lay dead on the tracks . As I filmed this tragedy , I heard the sound of planes returning . Quickly , I shot my remaining few feet [ of film ] on the baby . I ran toward the child , intending to carry him to safety , but the father returned . The bombers passed overhead . No bombs were dropped . " Wong never discovered the name of the burned and crying baby , whether it was a boy or a girl , or whether it survived . The next morning , he took the film from his Leica camera to the offices of " China Press " , where he showed enlargements to Malcolm Rosholt , saying , " Look at this one ! " Wong later wrote that the next morning ' s newspapers reported that some 1 , 800 people , mostly women and children , had been waiting at the railway station , and that the IJN aviators had likely mistaken them for a troop movement . The Shanghai papers said that fewer than 300 people survived the attack . In October , " Life " magazine reported about 200 dead . Publication . Wong sent the newsreel footage on a U . S . Navy ship to Manila and from there , the film was flown to New York City aboard a Pan American World Airways airliner . Beginning in mid - September 1937 , the newsreel was shown to movie theater audiences , estimated a month later to number 50 million people in the U . S . and 30 million outside of the U . S . and the still image of the crying baby was printed in Hearst Corporation newspapers and affiliates , some 25 million copies . A further 1 . 75 million non - Hearst newspaper copies showed the image in the U . S . , and 4 million more people saw it as a matte reproduction in other newspapers . Some 25 million people saw it internationally . It first appeared in " Life " magazine on October 4 , 1937 , at which point it was estimated that 136 million people had seen it . On the facing page in " Life " magazine , another photograph showed the baby on a stretcher receiving medical care . Reaction . The " unforgettable " image became one of the most influential photos to stir up anti - Japanese feeling in the United States . A " tidal wave of sympathy " poured out from America to China , and the image was widely reproduced to elicit donations for Chinese relief efforts . Catalyzed by the image , the U . S . , the United Kingdom and France protested Japanese bombing of Chinese civilians in open cities . Senator George W . Norris was influenced by the image , being convinced to abandon his longtime stance of isolationism and non - interventionism — he railed against the Japanese as " disgraceful , ignoble , barbarous , and cruel , even beyond the power of language to describe . " Americans used terms such as " butchers " and " murderers " against the Japanese . Subsequent to Shanghai ' s surrender , IJN Admiral Kōichi Shiozawa said to a reporter from " The New York Times " at a cocktail party : " I see your American newspapers have nicknamed me the Babykiller . " The image was voted by " Life " readers as one of ten " Pictures of the Year " for 1937 . In 1944 , Wong ' s newsreel sequence was used within the Frank Capra film " The Battle of China " . Allegations of falsehood . At the time , Japanese nationalists called the photograph a fake , and the Japanese government put a bounty of $ 50 , 000 on Wong ' s head : an amount equivalent to $ in 2018 . Wong was known to be against the Japanese invasion of China and to have leftist political sympathies , and he worked for William Randolph Hearst who was famous for saying to his newsmen , " You furnish the pictures and I ' ll furnish the war " in relation to the Spanish – American War . Another of Wong ' s photos appeared in " Look " magazine on December 21 , 1937 , showing a man bent over a child of perhaps five years of age , both near the crying baby . The man was alleged to be Wong ' s assistant Taguchi who was arranging the children for best photographic effect . An article in $ 3 said the man was a rescue worker who was posing the baby and the boy for the photographer . Wong described the man as the baby ' s father , coming to rescue his children as the Japanese aircraft returned following the bombing . Japanese propagandists drew a connection between what they claimed was a falsified image and the general news accounts by U . S . and Chinese sources reporting on the fighting in Shanghai , with the aim of discrediting all reports of Japanese atrocities . In 1956 , " Look " magazine ' s Arthur Rothstein supported his earlier opinion that Wong borrowed the baby and staged the photograph . In 1975 , " Life " magazine featured the famous photo in a picture book , and wrote in the caption , " It has been said that this is staged , but it is evident from various points that this is no more than a fabricated rumour . " In 1999 , the nationalist " Association for Advancement of Unbiased View of History " , a group founded by Professor Fujioka Nobukatsu of Tokyo University , published an article entitled " Manipulation of Documentary Photos in China : Fanning Flames of Hate in the USA " in which Nobukatsu and Shūdō Higashinakano argue that the photograph shows a man setting first one then two children on the railroad tracks for the purpose of making a " pitiable sight " for American viewers , to ready American citizens for war against Japan . The Japanese professors argue that Wong added smoke to make the image more dramatic , but Rosholt wrote that the train station was still smoking when Wong arrived . The Japanese nationalists do not say that the bombing did not happen , nor that Chinese civilians were not killed and wounded , but the presentation of the photograph as a fake allows for the easy interpretation that there are further falsehoods in the historical record . In the article , Nobukatsu and Higashinakano do not mention the additional Wong photo published in " Life " magazine which shows the baby crying on a medical stretcher as it is given first aid by a Chinese Boy Scout . Wong filmed more newsreels covering Japanese attacks in China , including the Battle of Xuzhou in May 1938 and aerial bombings in Guangzhou in June . He operated under British protection , but continued death threats from Japanese nationalists drove him to leave Shanghai with his family and to relocate to Hong Kong . Legacy . While in art school in the late 1940s , Andy Warhol painted a version of the photograph , the earliest of his many paintings based on photographs ; the original artwork has not been located and may be lost . Warhol ' s Disaster Series in the 1960s was a return to that format , to interpretations of the highly visible works produced by photojournalists . In 1977 , Lowell Thomas , journalist and narrator for Hearst rival Movietone News , set the photo ' s influence in America as high as two of the most iconic World War II images : a French man grimacing in tears as his country ' s soldiers abandon France in June 1940 , and Joe Rosenthal ' s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima , shot in February 1945 . Wong retired to Taipei in the 1970s and died of diabetes at his home at the age of 81 on March 9 , 1981 . In 2010 , Wong was honored as a pioneering Asian - American journalist by the Asian American Journalists Association . In 2000 , artist and journalist Miao Xiaochun projected the famous image against a white curtain , using the faintness of the projection to signify the diminution of its impact over time . The photograph appeared in the Time – Life book " 100 Photographs that Changed the World " , published in 2003 . " National Geographic " included the photograph in their " Concise History of the World : An Illustrated Timeline " in 2006 . The " searing image " was said by National Geographic author Michael S . Sweeney to have served as the " harbinger of Eastern militarism " .