Iris Shun-Ru Chang (traditional Chinese: 張純如; March 28, 1968November 9, 2004) was an American journalist, historian, and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanjing Massacre, The Rape of Nanking, and in 2003, . Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. The independent 2007 documentary film Nanking was based on her work and dedicated to her memory.
Chang attended the University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and graduated in 1985. She was initially a computer science major, but switched to journalism, earning a bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. During her time in college she also worked as a New York Times stringer from Urbana-Champaign, and wrote six front-page articles over the course of one year.
After brief stints at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, she pursued a master's degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.Paula Kamen, "How 'Iris Chang' became a verb: A eulogy" Salon.com, November 30, 2004. She began her career as an author and lectured and wrote magazine articles.
In 1991, Chang married Bretton Lee Douglas, a design engineer for Cisco Systems, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher, who was two years old at the time of her suicide. She lived in San Jose, California, in the final years of her life.EPILOGUE FOR THE 2011 EDITION - The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
Her second book, (1997),. was published on the 60th anniversary of the Nanjing 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 Rape of Nanking remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks. Based on the book, an American documentary film, Nanking, was released in 2007.
After publication of the book, Chang campaigned to persuade the Japanese government to apologize for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation.
Her third book, (2003),. is a history of Chinese Americans, that argues their treatment as perpetual outsiders by American society. Consistent with the style of her earlier works, the book relies heavily on personal accounts, drawing its strong emotional content from their stories. She wrote, "The America of today would not be the same America without the achievements of its ethnic Chinese," and that "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 US society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another."
...she confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with 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.
Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work, The Chinese in America. 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."
In 2007, the documentary Nanking was dedicated to Chang, as well as the Chinese victims of Nanjing.
"The Man Who Ended History", a story in The Paper Managerie by Ken Liu about uncovering the history of Unit 731, is dedicated to the memory of Chang.
R.F. Kuang's debut novel, The Poppy War, is dedicated to Iris Chang. The Poppy War, Harper Collins Publishers, R.F Kuang, 2018
Iris Chang Park in San Jose, that opened on November 9, 2019 (the 15th anniversary of Iris Chang's death), is a municipal park dedicated to Chang.
On November 9, 2004, at 9:15 A.M., Chang was found dead in the driver's seat of her Oldsmobile Alero car by a Santa Clara Valley Water District employee on a rural road south of Los Gatos, California and west of State Route 17, in Santa Clara County. Investigators concluded that Chang had committed suicide by shooting herself through the mouth with a .45 Ruger Old Army revolver. At the time of her death, she had been taking the medications Depakote and Risperdal to stabilize her mood.
It was later discovered that she had left behind three each dated 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.
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.
A report from the San Francisco Chronicle stated that news of her suicide had a strong impact on survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and the Chinese community in general.Kathleen E. McLaughlin, "Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help", San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2004.
In 2017, the Iris Chang Memorial Hall was built in Huai'an, China.
On November 9, 2019, Iris Chang Park was inaugurated in the Rincon district of San Jose.
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