THINK ABOUTIT UFO | UAP SIGHTING REPORT

1942: UFO over China

Sometime in the early 1940s, on a street in Japanese-occupied northern China, a sidewalk street photographer pointed his camera upward — or perhaps leveled it along the street and caught something incidentally — and captured what has become one of the earliest surviving photographic records of an unidentified aerial object over Asia. The photograph shows a busy Chinese commercial street, pedestrians in early 1940s clothing, a row of shopfronts, and in the sky above: a dark, cone or hat-shaped object, clearly distinct from the sky around it. Several people in the street are looking up. Two are pointing. The photograph was purchased as a souvenir by a Japanese soldier — or taken by a Japanese journalist in 1911, or photographed by an American serviceman in 1942, depending on which version of the provenance you accept. Chinese ufologist Shi Bo, writing in 1982, described it as the first photograph of a UFO taken in China. Wendelle Stevens included it in UFOs Over Modern China. The object above the street has three different claimed dates, two different claimed locations, and at least three different claimed photographers. What it does not have is an explanation.

Date: 1942 (disputed — also claimed as 1911; see editorial notes)

Sighting Time:  daylight

Day/Night: Day

Location: Tianjin (Tientsin), Hebei Province, China — Tsien Tsien Street (also referenced as an unspecified town in northern China)

Urban or Rural: Urban — commercial street

No. of Entity(‘s): None reported

Entity Type: N/A

Entity Description: N/A

Hynek Classification: DD — Daylight Disc (object of anomalous shape photographed in daylight; described as cone-shaped, disc-like, or “black hat” shaped — dark, clearly defined, silently flying)

Duration: Not recorded

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A dark cone-shaped or hat-shaped object flying silently above a Chinese commercial street. Described in the Shi Bo account as a “black hat silently flying above the street.” Several pedestrians visible looking upward; two pointing at the object.

Shape of Object(s): Cone / hat / disc — descriptions vary slightly across sources

Size of Object(s): Not recorded

Color of Object(s): Dark — described as black hat-shaped

Distance to Object(s): Above the street at low to medium altitude — close enough for multiple pedestrians to notice and point

Height & Speed: Flying silently; no speed recorded

Number of Witnesses: Multiple — several pedestrians visible in the photograph looking upward and pointing

Special Features/Characteristics: Photographic evidence — one of the earliest claimed photographs of a UAP in China; multiple conflicting provenance accounts (see editorial notes); original photograph purchased as a souvenir by a Japanese soldier from a street vendor; later acquired by the soldier’s son Masujiro Kiryu from his father’s wartime scrapbook; Chinese ufologist Shi Bo described it as the first UAP photograph taken in China (published 1983); included in Wendelle Stevens’ UFOs Over Modern China

Case Status: Insufficient Data — photograph provenance disputed; object not identified

Source: Wendelle Stevens, UFOs Over Modern China; Shi Bo, La Chine et les extraterrestres (Paris, 1983); UFOArtwork.com (Alain Stauffer, Geneva)

Summary/Description: A photograph apparently taken on a commercial street in northern China — most likely Tianjin — shows a dark cone or hat-shaped object silently flying above the street while multiple pedestrians look upward and two are pointing at it. The photograph was discovered by Japanese student Masujiro Kiryu in his father’s WWII-era China Campaign scrapbook, where it had been purchased from a street vendor. Provenance accounts conflict on the date (1911 vs. 1942), the photographer (Japanese journalist vs. Japanese soldier vs. American serviceman), and the precise location. Chinese ufologist Shi Bo described it as the first UFO photograph taken in China.

Related Cases: 1937 Vancouver BC disc photograph | 1942 Battle of Los Angeles searchlight photograph (same year) | 1942 WWII Foo Fighter reports (same theatre)

DETAILED REPORT

The 1942 China photograph is one of a small number of pre-modern UAP photographic records that have circulated in the research literature with enough consistency to establish a minimum provenance baseline, and it is the most analytically interesting early UAP photograph from Asia. Its primary analytical value is also its primary limitation: it is a photograph that shows something anomalous in the sky, witnessed by multiple pedestrians, over a specific urban location — but its provenance is contested across at least three independent and incompatible accounts.

The first version is the Masujiro Kiryu account via Wendelle Stevens: a Japanese soldier photographed or purchased a photograph of the object on Tsien Tsien Street in Tianjin during the China Campaign — the systematic Japanese military occupation of northern China that began in 1937 and was consolidated through the early 1940s. The soldier’s son found the photograph in his father’s scrapbook. A sidewalk street photographer had snapped the picture and sold copies as souvenirs. This is the most specific and internally consistent account.

The second version, noted by UFOArtwork.com, dates the photograph to 1911 and attributes it to a Japanese journalist in Tianjin. 1911 is a plausible date for early silver gelatin street photography in a major Chinese port city — Tianjin in 1911 was an international treaty port with European concession zones and a significant foreign press presence. The clothing visible in the photograph and the street scene are consistent with either the 1911 or early 1940s period, making the date uncertain from visual analysis alone.

The third version comes from Chinese ufologist Shi Bo, writing in La Chine et les extraterrestres (Paris, 1983) and relayed by Alain Stauffer of Geneva. Shi Bo describes an American man on duty walking a street in northern China in 1942, who saw a black hat flying silently overhead and immediately grabbed his camera. This version makes the photographer American rather than Japanese. Shi Bo calls this the first photograph of a UFO in China.

These three versions share a photograph, a location in northern China, and a dark hat-shaped object. They disagree on the year (1911 vs. 1942), the photographer’s nationality (Japanese vs. American), the mode of acquisition (original photo vs. purchased souvenir), and the street activity context. The conflicts cannot be resolved from available sources. What can be assessed is the photograph itself: it shows a dark, clearly defined object of non-conventional shape at a defined position in the sky above a busy Chinese street, with multiple witnesses reacting to it by looking upward and pointing. Street photographers in this era did not routinely fabricate such images — the technical constraints of 1910s–1940s photography made double exposure and darkroom manipulation of this kind visible on close examination of the original negative. Whether the original negative has been examined by a photo analyst is not established in available sources.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Black Hat Over the Street — Tianjin China and the Three-Provenance Problem

• Source Chain Assessment: Wendelle Stevens is a credible UFO photograph researcher whose UFOs Over Modern China is a legitimate compilaton. Shi Bo’s La Chine et les extraterrestres (1983) is a legitimate if early Chinese ufological publication. The UFOArtwork.com notation via Alain Stauffer is a secondary relay, not an independent source. The three-version provenance conflict is fully acknowledged in the page’s own source notes — UFOArtwork.com explicitly flags “there seems to be some confusion over this photo.” The case is INSUFFICIENT DATA by source-chain standards for the date and photographer, but the photograph itself is a genuine artifact.
• The 1911 vs 1942 Date Assessment: The street scene and pedestrian clothing are potentially consistent with either date. Tianjin in 1911 was an active treaty port with Japanese, British, French, and other concession zones — a Japanese journalist would have had access and reason to be photographing street scenes. Tianjin in 1942 was under Japanese military occupation, part of the broader China Campaign. Both dates place a Japanese presence in Tianjin and both are plausible contexts for the photograph. The clothing visible in the street scene does not definitively resolve the date question without higher-resolution analysis of the original photograph.
• The Object’s Shape — Cone, Hat, or Disc: Three different descriptors appear across the accounts: “cone-shaped” (page template), “black hat” (Shi Bo), and “disc” (Hynek classification on page). The object in the photograph appears as a dark defined form above the roofline — its exact geometry depends on the photograph’s resolution and the viewing angle. The “black hat” description in Shi Bo is the most specific first-person-adjacent account. A hat-shaped object — broader at the base, narrowing to a dome — is structurally consistent with numerous pre-modern disc-type sightings in the archive. The DD classification is appropriate.
• Photographic Technology Register: The image register technology for this case — whether 1911 or 1942 — falls in the silver gelatin period of Chinese street photography. 1911 would be early silver gelatin glass plates or early nitrocellulose film; 1942 would be mature silver gelatin film with standard press photography grain. Both periods are within the image technology register used for this archive’s dossier images. The dossier image should reflect the wartime 1942 register as the most commonly cited date.

A dark hat-shaped object flies silently above a Chinese street while the people below look up and point. A photograph was taken. Shi Bo says it is the first UAP photograph in China. Wendelle Stevens published it.

Three different accounts give three different photographers, two different dates, and at least two different street contexts. The original negative has not been traced in any publicly available analysis. The photograph exists. The object is in it. The people are pointing at it.

What it is has not been identified.

Case Status: Insufficient Data — photograph provenance disputed, object not explained.