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May 22, 2012 |
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Image:Iris pic2.jpg|thumb|right|Iris Chang Iris Shun-Ru Chang (Traditional Chinese character|Traditional Chinese: 張純如, Simplified Chinese character|Simplified Chinese: 张纯如; Pinyin: Zhāng Ch??nr??; 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 (book)|The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide in 2004 after suffering from Clinical depression|depression. The daughter of two University professors who immigrated from Taiwan, Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and was raised in Champaign, Illinois|Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she attended University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois. She earned a Bachelor's degree|bachelor's degree in Journalism at the University of Illinois, a Master's degree|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. 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 China|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 would endanger United States warships during the Persian Gulf War. The USS Missouri (BB-63)|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 (D96)|HMS Gloucester took out the Silkworms. During the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by the United States, a Silkworm missile was fired at Kuwait. Image:Rape-of-nanking-cover.gif|framed|right|The Rape of Nanking, Chang's most famous work Her second book, the best selling The Rape of Nanking (book)|The Rape of Nanking (1997), documents the Nanking Massacre of 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 and criticism from others 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 book was published on the 60th anniversary of The Rape of Nanking in 1937, 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 language 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 occurred. 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. http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewswc3.htm#6 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..." 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 often mentioned incident (as the The Times of London reported it):
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:
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." Chang suffered a nervous breakdown that required hospitalization while researching her fourth book, about United States soldiers who fought the Empire of Japan in the Philippines during the Pacific War and the Bataan Death March. She believed this hospitalization in Louisville, Kentucky 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 Clinical depression|depression. She lived in Sunnyvale, California <!-- some reports say San Jose? --> 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, California|Los Gatos and west of California State Route 17, in Santa Clara County, California|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: <blockquote>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.</blockquote> The next note was a draft of the third: <blockquote>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.</blockquote> The third note included: <blockquote>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 Central Intelligence Agency|CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.</blockquote> <blockquote>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 Federal government of the United States|government's attempt to discredit me.</blockquote> <blockquote>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.</blockquote> 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.
Category:1968 births|Chang, Iris Category:2004 deaths|Chang, Iris Category:People from New Jersey|Chang, Iris Category:Chinese American writers|Chang, Iris Category:United States historians|Chang, Iris Category:Women writers|Chang, Iris Category:Writers who committed suicide|Chang, Iris de:Iris Chang ja:アイリス・チャン nl:Iris Chang zh:张纯如 This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Iris Chang".
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