A plea from Shanghai

Hand-printed and hand-drawn, this map of the Japanese siege of Shanghai in February 1932 was meant to send a desperate plea to anyone overseas who might have listened. The map uses red symbols and arrows to show the encircling of the city by Japanese troops. Even more urgent, however, is the text. With notes like “thousands and thousands of Chinese civilians at the above districts have been killed and wounded,” and “a Japanese airplane bombed a refuge [sic] camp where there were 800 refugees,” this map clearly argues that the Chinese have been brutalized by an aggressive Japanese military force.

The cartographer added text for readers to compare the extent of the occupation to areas they might be more familiar with. On the bottom of the inset map, a label reads: “The JAPANESE have occupied the whole of MANCHURIA … with a population of 26,000,000. It doubles the area of FRANCE …”