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Iris Chang

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 freelance Chinese American historian and journalist. She was best known for her popular but controversial account of the Nanjing Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide in 2004 after suffering from depression.

Early life

The daughter of two 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. She earned a bachelor's degree in Journalism at the University of Illinois, a master's degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and later worked as a New York Times stringer from Urbana-Champaign. 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.

Works

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

Her first book, titled Thread of the Silkworm (1995), 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 U.S military debrief Nazi scientists for many years, he was suddenly falsely accused of being a spy, Communist Party member, 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 would endanger U.S. warships during the Persian Gulf War. The USS Missouri was attacked by two Iraqi Silkworm missiles in February of 1991, but only debris hit the Missouri as two Sea Dart missiles fired from the HMS Gloucester took out the Silkworms. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US, a Silkworm missile was fired at Kuwait.

Her second book, the best selling The Rape of Nanking (1997), documents the massacre of Chinese by Japanese soldiers during World War II, and includes interviews with victims. The book attracted both praise from some quarters and criticism from others of alleged inaccuracies. After publication of the book, she campaigned to persuade the Japanese government to apologise for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation. Finally, The Chinese in America (2003) describes the overall history of Chinese immigrants.

The book was published on the 60th anniversary of The Rape of Nanking, and was motivated in part by her own grandparent's stories about their escape from the massacre. The work is best known for its focus on oral history, and was the first popular English work to deal exclusively on the atrocity itself. It was a New York Times Bestseller and remained on the list for months. It won praise particularly for the accounts of the massacre and atrocities, including mass rape, which occured.

The controversy surrounding the work is an extension of controversy surrounding the Japanese denials of the massacre generally, and Iris Chang's working methods. Several reviewers criticised her tone and her belief that a conspiracy of silence surrounded research. Historian Robert Entenmann stated "Chang seems unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese." Many reviews criticised the historical background on Japan as being inaccurate and simplistic, or failing to use the appropriate terms for historical eras.

Chang's defenders point out that many of the sources cited in criticising the work made errors larger than Chang was accused of - for example one common source was Hata Ikuhito and his work "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable" published in 1998, which contained an implausibly low estimate of fatalities.

Her third work The Chinese in America would not achieve the same level of noteriety. While favorably reviewed, some writers friendly to her work such as Adrienne Mong would note, "at times, it seems she glosses over some of the more significant general events..."

File:Rape-of-nanking-cover.gif

The Rape of Nanking, Chang's most famous work

Celebrity

As many observers pointed out, whether positively or negatively, Iris Chang went beyond being an author to being a celebrity. 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. In one oft mentioned incident (as the London Times 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.

She was described in newspaper accounts as having a "public face" of "supreme control", which critics characterised as being the result of manipulating the public with emotionalism and a hunger for controversy. Despite this she was sought after for opinions on other works of modern Chinese history.

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. In one frequently quoted passage she asserted:

"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."

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."

Depression and death

Chang suffered a mental breakdown that required hospitalization while researching her fourth book, about U.S. soldiers who fought the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and the Bataan Death March. She believed this hospitalization in Louisville was perhaps a conspiracy against her, but her family and doctors attribute the breakdown partially to consistent sleep deprivation. Even after the release from the hospital, she still suffered from depression. She lived in Sunnyvale, California with her husband Brett Douglas, and their 2-year old son Christopher. 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 in the head.

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.

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.

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.

Reports say that news of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard. In tribute to Chang, the survivors held a service at the same time as her funeral at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos, 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, will add a wing dedicated to Iris Chang in 2005.

References

First lady meets with author on Nanjing Massacre Asian Political News, May 3 1999.

External links

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 Chang's defenders point out that many of the sources cited in criticising the work made errors larger than Chang was accused of - for example one common source was [[Hata Ikuhito]] and his work "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable" published in 1998, which contained an implausibly low estimate of fatalities.
-Her third work [[The Chinese in America (book) | The Chinese in America]] would not achieve the same level of noteriety. While favorably reviewed, some writers friendly to her work such as Adrienne Mong would note, "at times, it seems she glosses over some of the more signifcant general events..."
+Her third work [[The Chinese in America (book) | The Chinese in America]] would not achieve the same level of noteriety. While favorably reviewed, some writers friendly to her work such as Adrienne Mong would note, "at times, it seems she glosses over some of the more significant general events..."
 [[Image:Rape-of-nanking-cover.gif|framed|right|''The Rape of Nanking'', Chang's most famous work]]