Blood Saturday is a picture taken just moments after bombs dropped from the sky into Shanghai in 1937, and it captures a scene that defies words. The young child surrounded by the devastation that resulted from the Japanese air attack attests to the horrors of war, but the conflict during which the photo was taken is not one that people talk about nearly 100 years later.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was an early phase of World War II. After Japan invaded Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchuko in 1931, Japan and China engaged in small conflicts at various points until Japan invaded the country in 1937. On August 13, 1937, the Battle of Shanghai began and, 15 days later, Bloody Saturday was immortalized on film.

The image of the crying baby surrounded by rubble circulated widely and exacerbated growing anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States and Europe. The story behind the photo and the reaction it elicited is both complicated and heartbreaking.