From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iris Shun-Ru Chang (Traditional Chinese: 張純如; Simplified Chinese: 张纯如; pinyin: Zhāng Chúnrú; March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American freelance historian and journalist. She was best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanjing Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004, after a depressive episode resulting from a nervous breakdown.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Works 3 Celebrity 4 Depression and death 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

The daughter of two mainland-born university professors who immigrated from Taiwan, Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and was raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she attended University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois and graduated in 1985. She earned a bachelor's degree in Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, a master's degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and later worked as a New York Times stringer from Urbana-Champaign, in which capacity she wrote six front-page articles over the course of one year.^[1] After brief stints at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, she began her career as a writer, and also lectured and wrote articles for various magazines.

She married Bretton Douglas, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher, who was 2 years old at the time of her death. She lived in Sunnyvale, California in the final years of her life.

Though not a trained historian, Chang wrote three books that document the experiences of Asians and Chinese Americans in history.

Her first book, titled Thread of the Silkworm (1995),^[2] tells the life story of the Chinese professor, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and helped the military of the United States debrief scientists from Nazi Germany for many years, he was suddenly falsely accused of being a spy, a member of the Communist Party USA, and placed under house arrest from 1950 to 1955. Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen left for the People's Republic of China in September of 1955 aboard the merchant ship President Cleveland. Upon return to China, Tsien developed the Dongfeng missile program, and later the Silkworm missile, which ironically would later be used against the United States during the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Her second book, The Rape of Nanking (1997),^[3] was published on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, and was motivated in part by her own grandparents' stories about their escape from the massacre. It documents atrocities committed against Chinese by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and includes interviews with victims. The book attracted both praise from some quarters for exposing the details of the atrocity, and criticism from others because of alleged inaccuracies. After publication of the book, she campaigned to persuade the Government of Japan to apologise for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation. The work was the first popular English language work to deal exclusively on the atrocity itself, and remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for months. Based on this book, a documentary film, Nanking, will be released in 2007.

Her third book, The Chinese in America (2003),^[4] is a history of Chinese-Americans which argues that Chinese Americans were treated as outsiders. Consistent with the style of her earlier works, the book relies heavily on personal accounts, drawing its strong emotional content from each of their stories. She writes: "The America of today would not be the same America without the achievements of its ethnic Chinese. Scratch the surface of every American celebrity of Chinese heritage and you will find that, no matter how stellar their achievements, no matter how great their contribution to U.S. society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another."

Success as an author propelled Iris Chang into becoming a public figure. The Rape of Nanking placed her in great demand as a speaker and interview subject, and, more broadly, as a spokesperson for an entire viewpoint that the Japanese government had not done enough to compensate victims of their invasion of China. This became a political issue in the United States shortly after the book was published; Chang was one of the major advocates of a Congressional resolution proposed in 1997 to have the Japanese government apologize for war crimes, and met with First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1999 to discuss the issue.^[5] In one often mentioned incident (as the The Times of London reported it):

she confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on television, demanding an apology and expressed herself dissatisfied by his mere acknowledgement "that really unfortunate things happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". "It is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her reaction. ^[6]

Iris Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work The Chinese in America, where she argued that Chinese Americans were treated as outsiders.^{[citation needed]}

After her death she became the subject of tributes from fellow writers. Mo Hayder dedicated a novel to her. Reporter Richard Rongstad eulogized her as "Iris Chang lit a flame and passed it to others and we should not allow that flame to be extinguished."^{[citation needed]}

Chang suffered a nervous breakdown in July 2004, which her family and doctors attribute in part to constant sleep deprivation. At the time, she was several months into research for her fourth book, about the Bataan Death March, while simultaneously promoting The Chinese in America. While en route to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where she planned to gain access to a "time capsule" of audio recordings from servicemen, she suffered an extreme bout of depression that left her unable to leave her hotel room in Louisville. A local veteran who was assisting her research helped her check into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, where she was diagnosed with reactive psychosis, placed on medication for three days and then released to her parents. Even after the release from the hospital, she still suffered from depression and was considered at risk for developing bipolar disorder.^[7]

Chang's family and doctors attribute this condition in part to constant sleep deprivation. Chang was also reportedly deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research. Her work in Nanjing left her physically weak, according to one of her co-researchers.^[8]

On Tuesday, November 9, 2004 at about 9 a.m., Chang was found dead in her car by a county water district employee on a rural road south of Los Gatos and west of California State Route 17, in Santa Clara County. Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth with a revolver. At the time of her death she had been taking the medications Depakote and Risperdal to control convulsions and mania.^[7]

She left behind three suicide notes each dated Monday, November 8, 2004. "Statement of Iris Chang" stated:

I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. I will stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. I will follow the doctor's orders for medications. I promise not to hurt myself. I promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide.^[7]

The next note was a draft of the third:

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day -- but by the minute. It is far better that you remember me as I was -- in my heyday as a best-selling author -- than the wild-eyed wreck who returned from Louisville... Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take -- the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. I know that my actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who love me the most. Please forgive me. Forgive me because I cannot forgive myself.

[1]

The third note included:

There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.

Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me.

I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.

[2]

Reports say that news of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard.^[8] In tribute to Chang, the survivors held a service at the same time as her funeral at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Cupertino, California on Friday, November 12, 2004 at the victims' memorial hall in Nanjing. The victims memorial hall in Nanjing, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, added a wing dedicated to Iris Chang in 2005.

1. ^ Paula Kamen, "How 'Iris Chang' became a verb: A eulogy," Salon.com, November 30, 2004.
2. ^ Iris Chang. Thread of the Silkworm (Basic Books, 1995). ISBN 0-465-08716-7
3. ^ Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Basic Books, 1997). ISBN 0-465-06835-9
4. ^ Iris Chang. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (Penguin, 2003). ISBN 0-670-03123-2
5. ^ "First lady meets with author on Nanjing Massacre," Kyodo News, May 3, 1999.
6. ^ "Online NewsHour: I'm Sorry -- December 1, 1998," Online NewsHour, December 1, 1998.
7. ^ ^{a b c} Heidi Benson, "Historian Iris Chang won many battles," The San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 2005.
8. ^ ^{a b} Kathleen E. McLaughlin, Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help," The San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2004.

• Nanking Massacre
• John Rabe
• Tsien Hsue-shen

• Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WW II in Asia co-founded by Iris Chang
• IrisChang.net
• Iris Chang papers at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
• Essay by Sue De Pasquale
• San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2004 - Chinese American writer found dead in South Bay
• Penny Nelson talks to Iris Chang June 22, 2003 on KQED FM Forum.
• San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2004 Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help