Iris Chang’s research into the atrocities committed by the Japanese on the Chinese people – particularly Chinese women – during the “rape of Nanking” in 1937 – much of it dug out of buried archives and brought to light for the first time – was in service of her eventual book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. The rape of Nanking really was “forgotten” because the Japanese wanted it forgotten. They would refer to it as “unfortunate excesses” etc., and refuse to acknowledge the sheer scope of the crime, as well as how deliberate the attack was. This wasn’t just a couple of bad apples running wild on the women of Nanking. This was an orchestrated war crime. Rape is a war crime. It is an excruciating book, and I found it very difficult to finish it (the pictures haunt me to this day) but it is an essential book for this very reason. Don’t you turn away from it. It’s one of the most important books written in the last 50 years. She wasn’t even 30 years old when she wrote it.
She went on to write two more books, also extremely worthwhile, pulling out different elements of the Chinese-American experience: The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, which is self-explanatory and very interesting, and Thread of the Silkworm
, which unearths the story of Qian Xuesen, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was forced out of the program because of McCarthyism, was then deported, and went on to be a major figure in China’s space program.
This was such an important writer. Such an essential voice and mind. Her research was exquisite, detailed, she found stories that had never been told before (the Nazi dude stationed in Nanking, who took it upon himself to save as many women as he could from the attacks – he did so at great danger to himself, and he did so just because he knew it was wrong. This is the kind of ambiguity – a good and helpful Nazi – that the truth often brings us … and Chang told his story for the first time.)
It is by The Rape of Nanking for which Chang will always be known.
Excerpt:
In the 1930s, Japanese military leaders had boasted — and seriously believed — that Japan could conquer all of mainland China within three months. But when a battle in a single Chinese city alone dragged from summer to fall, and then from fall to winter, it shattered Japanese fantasies of an easy victory. Here, this primitive people, illiterate in military science and poorly trained, had managed to fight the superior Japanese to a standstill. When Shanghai finally fell in November, the mood of the imperial troops had turned ugly, and many, it was said, lusted for revenge as they marched toward Nanking.
Iris Chang paid a price for her research into these atrocities. It took an enormous toll on her. You don’t come out of writing a book like The Rape of Nanking unscathed. Chang committed suicide in 2004. Yes, she had clinical depression, but you cannot ignore the impact her exhaustive research had on her, the toll it took, the horrifying stories she felt it her duty to tell, to show the truth in the clear light of all its horrifying brutality.
We owe her such a huge debt. I still mourn the loss of Iris Chang.
Your tribute to Iris Chang was beautiful. I read her book a while back and can see why it took such a great toll on her. Her suicide was a terrible tragedy and a loss to the world.
Thank you so much Tom. Yes: such a tragedy.
And the Japanese government still refuses to accept full responsibility.