Animation in black and white are featured in the documentary World War II: China's Forgotten War. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Zhang Tianzhu, 27, the film's producer, says depicting the story using animation was one way of re-creating what actually happened.

"There is very little footage and most of it is from the US or Taiwan and not the mainland. We decided to use simple grainy animation because it is like an old, dark memory," she says.

The documentary is presented by Rana Mitter, Deutsche Bank director of the Dickson Poon China Center and professor of modern Chinese history at Oxford University.

"What we wanted to get across was the role China played in the war, which often gets lost in most Western histories of the conflict," he says. Mitter is author of China's War With Japan, 1937-1945, the Struggle for Survival, now published in Chinese and one of the most important recent books on the conflict.

"There is always more focus on Hitler and the European conflict and when it comes to the Pacific War it is always the Americans, Australians and the British fighting the Japanese. China's war with Japan is often underplayed because it is seen as Asians fighting Asians and one where the West does not have a big role."

The first episode begins with Mitter in Poland, making a link between the deaths that took place in Warsaw's Wola district as a result of Nazi barbarism with the atrocities committed by the Japanese when they invaded Nanjing and raped between 20,000 and 40,000 women.