Iris Chang

Journalist and activist

• Pronunciation: I-rihs SOON-roo CHANG
• Born: March 28, 1968
• Birthplace: Princeton, New Jersey
• Died: November 9, 2004
• Place of death: Los Gatos, California

Iris Chang was a journalist who wrote about the experiences of the wartime Chinese and Chinese Americans. Her book The Rape of Nanking made her a prominent activist in the cause to press the Japanese government to acknowledge war crimes its forces committed during World War II.

Areas of achievement: Journalism, activism

Early Life

Iris Chang was born on March 28, 1968, in Princeton, New Jersey. Her parents had immigrated to the United States from China to study at Harvard. Chang grew up in Illinois, after her parents moved there to teach at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She graduated from the University Laboratory High School in 1985. Chang remained in Champaign-Urbana for her undergraduate years and entered the university’s journalism program.

Upon her own initiative, she approached the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and became a “stringer,” or freelance journalist. Six of her articles made the front page of the New York Times. Chang’s determination to succeed struck many as arrogant. However, she struck others as shy, withdrawn, and unaware of certain social and professional norms.

After graduating from college in 1989, Chang moved to Chicago, where she worked for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune. In 1990, she entered a master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins University, where she focused on science writing. Chang married Brett Douglas, whom she had met in college, in 1991. The couple settled in San Jose, California, in 1996.

Life’s Work

As a graduate student, Chang earned a book contract for a biography of Hsue-shen Tsien. Tsien, a Chinese-born scientist, was one of the founders of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist campaign of the 1950s, he was accused of being a spy and a member of the Communist Party. After his detention and deportation in September 1955, Tsien returned to mainland China, where he helped develop the Chinese intercontinental missile program. The Silkworm missile that he developed was used against the United States in the Gulf War. Thread of the Silkworm, which was published in 1995, would be the first of Chang’s books dealing with injustice in China.

As a child, Chang’s grandparents had told her the story of their escape from Nanking (now Nanjing), then the capital of China, shortly before the Imperial Japanese invasion at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in December 1937. Many civilians were captured and killed. Chang became determined to find out more about the massacre, and her next book was devoted to exposing the atrocities committed against the Chinese population during the Imperial Japanese occupation. It is estimated that between 260,000 and 350,000 Chinese civilians were victims of violence, including rape, torture, and execution.

Chang traveled to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to interview survivors; read diaries, letters, and news accounts; and visit archives to create a vivid picture of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops. One result of her research was the recovery of the diary of the German businessman John Rabe, who was an independent eyewitness to the massacres. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), published on the sixtieth anniversary of the event, was the first English-language nonfiction account of the massacre. It was a best seller, selling over half a million copies and remaining on the New York Times’ best-seller list for ten weeks. Chang spent over a year promoting her book and became a spokesperson and icon for the campaign to persuade the Japanese government to acknowledge and apologize for the massacre and pay compensation. During an interview on a public television news program, Chang confronted the Japanese ambassador to the United States, demanding an apology that went beyond Japan’s acknowledgement that an unfortunate incident happened at Nanking. Chang’s book was received with emotional sensitivity in Japan. The translation of the book was eventually canceled by the publisher due to pressure from conservative Japanese groups. In reaction to The Rape of Nanking, some historians were critical, pointing out that the massacres were fairly well reported at the time. Others claimed it is exaggeration to compare the massacre at Nanking to the genocide perpetrated against European Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Chang’s third book, The Chinese in America (2003), documents the Chinese experience in the United States. Relying heavily on personal accounts, she argues the Chinese have always been treated as outsiders in the United States.

Chang’s final project was to be a book exposing the atrocities committed against US soldiers by the Imperial Japanese army during the Bataan Death March on the Philippine Islands in World War II, as well as United States’ unwillingness to prosecute Japanese offenders and sue for compensation.

Beginning in 1999, Chang began exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder, marked especially by her driven, almost manic and obsessive commitment to work, accompanied by mood swings and insomnia. In addition, because of her personal involvement with the experiences of those she was interviewing, Chang became possessed by irrational fears of reprisals by conservative Japanese groups or the US government due to the political embarrassment caused by her books and activism. While on a research trip to Kentucky in August 2004 to interview Bataan survivors, she suffered a deep bout of depression and psychosis, and she was involuntarily hospitalized. Back home and on medications, her depression continued. Chang committed suicide on November 9, 2004, leaving behind her family and two-year-old son.

Chang’s sudden death removed a powerful moral force for the Nanking survivor and Chinese activist communities. She was commemorated by numerous tributes and a ceremony in Nanking, where a bronze statue of her was installed at the Nanking Memorial Hall.

Significance

Chang’s work as a journalist and author helped to shed light on the experiences of wartime Chinese and Chinese Americans in the United States. She helped unsettle Japan’s silence about war crimes committed by its soldiers. Through her books and lectures, she gave voice to the anonymous victims of twentieth-century atrocities.

Bibliography

Chang, Iris. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print. A history of the Chinese experience in the United States.

---. The Thread of the Silkworm. New York: Basic, 1995. Print. Chang’s biography of a Chinese missile scientist, falsely accused during the McCarthy era.

---. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic, 1997. Print. Chang’s breakthrough work, exposing the horrors of the Japanese massacre at Nanking in December 1937.

Kamen, Paula. Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind. Philadelphia: De Capo, 2007. Print. A friend of Chang traces her career and personal life leading to her suicide.