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Nanjing
Massacre claims another life
By Victor Fic, November
17, 2004
BEIJING - "The chronicle of
humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that
even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then
few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the rape of
Nanjing during World War II." So wrote Chinese-American author Iris
Chang in the introduction to her 1997 bookThe Rape of Nanking: The
Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Basic Books, 1997). A New York
Times best-seller that was translated into 13 languages, the book
sank like a stone into the pond of official historical apathy in the
West and official denial and evasion in Japan. Still, there were
exceptions. Much to the shock and horror of her millions of fans and
supporters worldwide, the 36-year-old Chang committed suicide by
firing a single bullet into her head on November 9. A commuter
discovered her body alone in her car on a rural road near Sunnyvale,
which is close to San Jose, California.
It is a sadly opportune time
to review her brief, yet remarkable life as a successful
Chinese-American woman, and her career as a journalist-historian who
made her most prominent mark within the international redress
movement that implores Japan to atone for its imperial-era war
crimes. Chang was
born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1968 and grew up in
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Both her parents taught at the
University of Illinois. She said she first heard about the 1937
Nanjing Massacre while growing up within her family, for her
grandparents had escaped from the beleaguered city where massacres
took place from the city's fall to the Japanese in December 1937
into March 1938. As many as 300,000 civilians were murdered; an
estimated 20,000-80,000 women were raped, most of them later
murdered. Chang eventually earned an undergraduate journalism degree
from the University of Illinois and put in a reporting stint with
the Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press. Then she enrolled in
the master's program at Johns Hopkins University in 1990.
Her first book, called
Thread of the Silkworm, (Basic Books, 1995) told the story of a
Chinese rocket scientist, Dr Tsien Hsue-shen. A former professor of
aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the California Institute of Technology, Tsien helped
found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The
United States government deported Tsien in the 1950s, fearing that
he was spying for Beijing; he ended up making missiles for China,
such as the Silkworm missile. When the Cox report by US
representative Christopher Cox, a California Republican, alleging
Chinese high-technology espionage in the United States was issued in
January 1999 (and declassified in May 1999), it cited Chang's book
as asserting that Tsien was, in fact, a spy. Chang lashed out at the
report, clarifying that her book could not firmly conclude that he
was one, adding that the issue would remain unresolved until Beijing
and Washington offered more information. Showing her sense of
impartiality and fair play, she added that if the US government
wanted to make its case that someone was a communist and a spy, it
had to offer proof.
It was Chang's book on
Nanjing that catapulted her to prominence. Chronicling the massacre
itself, she wrote, "As victims toppled to the ground, moaning and
screaming, the streets, alleys, and ditches of the fallen capital
[of Nationalist China] ran rivers of blood." As for the many rapes
committed, Chang quoted a Japanese veteran as saying, "Perhaps when
we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman, but when we killed
her, we just thought of her as something like a pig." Apparently,
many troops thought that raping virgins would ensure them greater
power in battle. She noted, "Soldiers were even known to wear
amulets made from the pubic hair of such victims, believing that
they possessed magical powers against injury." The book won immense acclaim among
journalistic reviewers in the United States and elsewhere and it
galvanized the movement for redress. Chang was widely hailed for
bringing to America's and the world's attention an issue about which
even well-educated people knew little. American conservative pundit
George Will famously opined that thanks to Chang's efforts, a
"second rape of Nanking", meaning the denial of the truth, had been
averted.
However, the book was not
universally applauded. Japanese nationalists of various stripes
denounced Chang as a de facto or real agent of the Chinese
government, determined to spread anti-Japanese propaganda. Some
Japanese commentators insisted that Chang's book contained errors,
such as photographs of the alleged massacres that they could "prove"
came from other sources. Other interlocutors went further and asserted that the
Nanjing Massacre never happened at all, meaning that Chang was
perpetuating a fable. In 1998, Chang told this author that "not a
single week goes by when I don't suffer harassment from some vicious
right-wing Japanese group," insisting that she lied. As the book
never appeared in Japanese because of a falling-out between Chang
and her publisher, most average Japanese do not know of her efforts.
But many do know of the atrocities committed in Nanjing.
In addition, some
professional Japan experts in the US dunned Chang and the redress
movement, alleging that their efforts to make Tokyo officially
apologize for the war and pay compensation to its victims was an
example of ethnic solidarity and special-interest politics. Chang's
defenders retorted that the issue of justice denied was all too
clear, and they pointed to the growing number of non-Chinese
supporters, such as those in Korea, the Philippines, elsewhere in
Southeast Asia and globally. Her most recent book, The Chinese in America, chronicled the
colorful, dramatic history of how and why the Chinese came to the
United States and their ability to overcome prejudice and cultural
barriers in order to win respect and achieve success.
As for Chang's unexpected
suicide - she was renowned for her drive and passion - friends said
they were bewildered. Chang herself admitted that she felt rage as
she researched the Nanjing Massacre, even suffering nightmares. It
appears that Chang - determined to be the voice of the forgotten -
had started to gather material for a book on US soldiers tortured by
the Japanese in the Philippines during the war when she suffered a
nervous breakdown in Kentucky five months ago and entered a
hospital. Her
friends have explained that she tended to take her sometimes
gruesome research to heart, but they cannot be sure if this tendency
factored in her demise. They also told this author that her family -
she left behind her husband and a one-year-old son - is protecting
its privacy, and hers.
What can be known is that
Chang left behind a lustrous legacy of truth. According to retired
San Francisco Superior Court judge Lillian Sing, "She was a real
woman warrior trying to fight injustice" through her writing, her
lectures on campuses and at bookstores and her media appearances.
In 1998, the
Organization of Chinese American Women named Chang National Woman of
the Year. None other than luminary historian Stephen Ambrose deemed
Chang one of America's most promising young historians. San
Francisco Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon added that Chang
herself had become "one of the most visible Chinese-American
authors" in her homeland.
In the many tributes being
paid to her, the common theme is that Chang was above all a truth
teller. Those who want to honor her memory can best do so by
following her example of courage, vision and honesty.
Victor Fic is a
freelance writer and broadcaster currently in Beijing.
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