TELEVISION - July 4, 1991

A First Look: Japan’s public television Wednesday night aired rare film of the 1937 “rape” of Nanking by Japanese soldiers, showing Chinese civilians with hands tied behind their backs being shot and dumped in a ditch. No known footage of the massacre had previously been shown in Japan. The scenes, from a 30-minute documentary titled “China Invaded,” were filmed with a 16-millimeter camera and smuggled out of Japanese-occupied China by an American missionary in 1938. Some Japanese officials over the years have questioned foreign interpretations of what Japanese often call the Nanking “incident.”