New documentary on Tokyo Trials to air in China

A new three-episode documentary providing rare footage of the Tokyo Trials will began airing on Tuesday, China's National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Trials, when the Allied Forces tried Japanese war criminals at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo after World War II. The proceedings played an important part in shaping the postwar Asia-Pacific order.

Some rare footage, including witnesses testimony, and war criminals defending themselves in court are to be broadcast for the first time in China.

In one episode, U.S. missionary John Gillespie Magee, one of the key witnesses, is seen giving testimony.

"It was unbelievably terrible," Magee said as he recalled witnessing hundreds of civilians slaughtered by Japanese troops in a school in the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937. The mass killing is also known as Nanjing Massacre, when over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed in six weeks after the city fell to the Imperial Japanese Army.

In February 2014, China's top legislature designated Dec. 13 as National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims.

The documentary, produced by Copyright Assets Management Center of SMG & Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives, was edited from 182 clips of over 28 hours' footage.

"We've found footage of the witnesses taken from various angels. It was surprising they had put so many cameras in court," said Zhu Xiaoqian, director of the documentary.

The new series will be broadcast in English with Mandarin subtitles. Two other versions, in Chinese and Japanese respectively, are also to be released. Endi