Carl Zha Profile picture
Host Silk & Steel Podcast on China, history, culture, politics @SteelSilkn, carlzhapodcast@gmail.com wife:@BaliEarthSoul

Mar 18, 2022, 8 tweets

How US Propaganda is made:

Washington Post Aug 3rd, 2016 post it claim to be a grainy pic of Chinese peasant suffering frm Great Leap Forward.

It's actually WW2 photo by Harrison Forman of 1943 Henan Famine in KMT controlled area: collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collec…

Gotta thank Tim for bring this matter to my attention

I suspected that's NOT a Great Leap Forward photo bc cloth more pre-1949 than 1959-1963.

When I did Google image search, just get Great Leap Forward results. with top search result in Wapo and RFA articles. I realized I need to change the auto populated search terms...

When I changed the search term to Chinese 饥荒 (famine), suddenly all results are about 1942 Henan Famine. Finally found a Chinese article reference American photographer Harrison Forman.

So then I perform separate search for Harrison Forman archives in English

Searching "Harrison Forman Henan" led me to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Harrison Forman collection of China photos.

Harrison Forman had 1057 photos of Henan alone. "Henan Famine" narrowed down to 411 results. I clicked thru each page til I found this photo which showed the same people just in different pose. That's when I was convinced that I'm on the right track
collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collec…

Looking at subject terms, I changed search term to "Famines Children", it narrowed down to 63 results. That's when I finally found what I was looking for.
collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collec…

Man eating tree bark in Henan Famine 1943. Photo by Harrison Forman

Henan already suffering aft Chiang Kai-shek ordered Yellow River dike blown up to stop Japanese, was hit by drought and locusts. But KMT continued to requisition grain for soldiers...
collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collec…

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