Carl Hubert de Villeneuve’s 1820s sketch.
The last sighting of a Japanese wolf – a subspecies of the grey wolf – was recorded in Nara Prefecture on the 23rd of January, 1905.
In the century before, during the Meiji Restoration, killing the wolves had become a national policy.
A memorial statue now stands in the village of Higashiyoshino, where the last wolf was seen.
The animal is now considered extinct.
8th October 1942: A house at Myilly Point in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory destroyed by a Japanese air raid.
Australia was bombed in about a hundred separate air raids between 1942 and 1943 during the Second World War.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
17th September 1945: Soldiers of the Australian 2/31st Battalion pass through Bandjermasin in Borneo as they take responsibility for the island after the surrender of Japan in the Second World War. It was reported they were given an enthusiastic welcome by the locals.
The island of Borneo was under Japanese occupation from the end of 1941. Bandjermasin is now part of Indonesia.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Freed Korean “Comfort Women” – women forced to work as sex slaves for the Empire of Japan during the Second World War – talk to US soldiers in a photograph dated the 14th of August, 1944.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women from Asia, as well as several hundred from the Netherlands and Australia, were treated this way.
Here is the official caption of the photograph:
“Three Korean “comfort girls” (captured in Burma), photographed while being interrogated by Capt. Won Loy Chan (San Francisco, California), Tech. Sgt. Robert Honda (Hawaii) and Sgt. Hirabayashi (Seattle, Washington), all of the G-2 Myitkyina Task Force of the U.S. Army.”
2nd April 1943: A house in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory is severely damaged by a Japanese air raid.
Australia was bombed in about a hundred separate air raids between 1942 and 1943 during the Second World War.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
The Christian Martyrs Of Nagasaki (painted 16th-17th century).
On the 5th of February, 1597, a group of Catholics were executed by crucifixion in Nagasaki, Japan.
The victims were four Spaniards, one Mexican, one Indian (all Franciscan missionaries), three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese members of the Third Order of St Francis (including children).
The atrocity was carried out on the orders of Hideyoshi Toyotomi.
Generations later it was discovered that Japan had a community of underground “hidden Catholics” who had not been discouraged by the persecution.
The Catholic church of Nagasaki was ground zero when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945 at the end of the Second World War.
22nd December 1937: Locals in Nanking, China clean up after the retreat of the Chinese army. The image appeared in a January 1938 edition of Japanese news picture magazine Asahi Graph. Japan had defeated China in the Battle of Nanking earlier in the month.
Despite promises that civilians wouldn’t be harmed, by the time the image was published Japanese soldiers had killed between 40 000 and 300 000 people in what would become known as the Rape of Nanking, or the Nanking Massacre.
A retouched version, and the original image.
10th December 1941: Britain suffered heavy losses off the coast of Malaya at the midway point of the Second World War. Japanese torpedoes took out both HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, delivering a heavy blow to British morale.
The photograph was taken from a Japanese aeroplane.
The retouched image can be found in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.
9th December 1937: Japanese troops march on Nanking, China, carrying guns and wheels.
Days later, the soldiers would begin a spree of mass rape and mass murder that claimed the lives of between 40 000 and 300 000 people. The crime would come to be known as the Rape of Nanking, or the Nanking Massacre.
2nd September 1945: This photograph, taken on board the USS Missouri, shows Japanese representatives taking part in a ceremony to formalise Japan’s surrender in the Second World War.
The document of surrender, signed on this day, ended the war.
