H. S. "Newsreel" Wong (1900 – March 9, 1981) was a Chinese newsreel photojournalist. He is most notable for Bloody Saturday,[1] a photograph of a crying baby in Shanghai that he took during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Wong was also known as Wang Haisheng (Chinese: 王海升) or Wang Xiaoting (Chinese: 王小亭).[2] He owned a camera shop in Shanghai.[1] For capturing moving images he used an Eyemo newsreel camera, and for still photography he used a Leica.
In the 1920s and 1930s, H. S. Wong worked in China and provided photographs and films for various newspapers and agencies, such as Hearst Metrotone News and Shanghai News.[2][3] Wong's most famous photo, "Bloody Saturday" or "Shanghai Baby", was taken during the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It shows a baby sitting up and crying amid the bombed-out wreckage of Shanghai South Railway Station.[2][3] Within a year of its publishing, the photo was seen by more than 136 million people.[4] In 2010, Wong was honored as a pioneering Asian-American journalist by the Asian American Journalists Association.[5]
Wong filmed more newsreels covering Japanese attacks in China, including the Battle of Xuzhou in May 1938 and aerial bombings in Guangzhou in June.[6] At times, he placed himself in danger to get a photo; once was subjected to bombing and strafing by Japanese aircraft.[7] After angering the Japanese by documenting the violence of their attacks, the Japanese government put a bounty of $50,000 on his head.[8] In China, 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.[9]
Wong retired to Taipei in the 1970s and died of diabetes at his home at the age of 81 on March 9, 1981.[10]