The Chinese edition of a documentary on the massacre of some
300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers by the invading
Japanese army during World War II was donated to China Wednesday by
its American producer Lou Reda.
The 45-minute documentary was presented to the Beijing-based Museum
in Memory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against
Japanese Aggression by Liu Renhao on behalf of the producer.
The documentary was produced in 1999 by Reda, a Chinese American
famous for his documentary production, and promoted by an American
association on the history of the resistance war against Japanese
aggression during World War II.
The documentary was based on films shot by non-Chinese missionaries
in Nanjing during the war and conclusions drawn by some
historians.
At
the donation ceremony, Whitney R. Harris, an American citizen who
served as a prosecutor in the 1945 Nuremberg trials in Germany,
said those massacred in the streets of Nanjing were disarmed
soldiers and unarmed civilians, and they were the victims of the
Japanese imperial army.
He
called on people around the world to support each other in a bid to
build a world of peace and prosperity free from racial
discrimination and hatred.
After the screening of the documentary, the first time on the
Chinese mainland, Chen Qigang, curator of the museum, said people
who watched the film would be shocked and indignant by the brutal
and inhuman violence committed by the Japanese soldiers.
He
said the attempts by Japanese right-wing forces to deny the
historic facts of the Nanjing Massacre are unpopular.
At
the premiere ceremony of the documentary in the United States,
Harris said the massacre was horrifying, and the world needs to be
reminded time and again so as to draw a lesson from it and strive
to prevent it from happening again.
(Xinhua News
Agency April 18, 2002)