China's national flag flies at half-mast during a national memorial ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre at the memorial hall for the massacre victims in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2019. Photo: Xinhua

The Nanjing Massacre memorial hall said that it has contacted the owner of a photo album with alleged new evidence of crimes committed by Japanese invaders in China. The album has drawn huge attention after a man from Minneapolis in the US posted details about it on the internet.

Evan Kail, a pawn shop owner, said in a TikTok clip on Thursday that he received a World War II-era photo album, which contains more than 30 photos documenting the crimes committed by the Japanese army during the massacre.

The Nanjing Massacre took place when Japanese troops captured the then Chinese capital on December 13, 1937. Over six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.

Kail said in the video that a museum or other authority should own these photos, and he would not sell it to private collectors.

He continued to publish several of the violent photos in the album on his Twitter account.

The video clip on TikTok soon went viral and the news spread on Chinese social platforms. On Sina Weibo, the clip was reposted around 50,000 times, and many netizens called The Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, suggesting it should contact Kail.

The memorial hall is currently investigating the information in the video and has tried to contact Kail, but it had received no reply as of press time.

"The memorial hall has strict procedures for the collection of cultural relics," a member of staff told the Global Times on Thursday. "Every year the memorial hall works on collection of cultural relics and donations. Currently the most important thing is to contact the man in the video to verify the information."

The Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders is a thematic memorial hall built on the site of the Jiangdong Gate mass murder in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province.

It displays the history of the massacre, the "Comfort Women" system set up by the Japanese army and the victory of the Chinese people's resistance against Japanese aggression. A total of nearly 4,000 photographs, 9,992 artifacts and 262 videos are on display, according to the memorial hall's website.