"I believe Iris in heaven would want me to do this, to channel my sadness into something positive.". Stories about Chang's grandparents' harrowing escape were part of her family legacy and prompted her to embark on this ambitious project, for which she interviewed elderly survivors of the massacre and discovered thousands of rare documents in four different languages. She feared these vaccinations may have caused him to become autistic. I told her that I wanted her to call me the next night and every night after that until she worked out the details. The book with both Chang's and Rhodes' names on its cover has sold more copies than expected and received positive reviews, including one in the Wall Street Journal, since its launch in May. "Sometimes, people can be both mentally ill and highly disciplined, highly structured, highly productive members of society, whether you're talking about science or business or the arts. He explained that the gunpowder she had was unsafe to use indoors. Ironically, the very condition that put her career on a slower track has also helped her avoid the emotional and physical burnout that the ambitious Chang experienced during her last year. Other parts were not. She wrote her 100-page book proposal in a couple of weeks.". "Talking to her, you felt like she was one of the family." When her body was discovered, Iris Chang had been dead for two hours. On August 31, 2002, Christopher Douglas, their son, was born. . She knew where to find the glass case of Civil War era pistol replicas, classified as "relics." "Iris was so excited when she got the contract for the book," Brett said, recalling how obsessively she ferreted out material. Dive into our most recent stories and exclusive insights from our editors and staff. There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. In the end, the war she could not win raged internally. When they were both journalism students in the late 80s at the University of Illinois in Urbana, it was Chang who won the prized internships. Iris Chang (Author, . Neither did they know she had been bent on suicide. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography Finding Iris Chang,[1] and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. In the backseat, a teddy bear was tucked into the car seat of her 2-year-old son, Christopher. It was just after nine on a November morning in 2004 and he had spotted a female driver who was either asleep or in trouble. "First they gave her an antipsychotic, to stabilize her," her mother said. "She got what she wanted and got out," he said. "She ventured into a minefield of unexploded ordnance.". Photos for a profile of Iris chang, a prominenet author and historian, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I don't know how many printings it went through. Christopher Douglas is known for The Onedin Line (1971), Early Travellers in North America (1992) and Crown Court (1972). ", After studying the final results of the Santa Clara Country medical examiner's report, Baker closed his investigation March 1, 2005. "Every time we set a rule, she always tried to find some way to get around it. Chang has written for numerous publications, such as the New York Times, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, and has been featured by countless radio, television and print media, including Nightline, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, Good Morning America, C-Span's Booknotes, and the front cover of Reader's Digest. A lot of people misunderstood her in that way. At 12:40 p.m., she stopped for lunch at FujiSan Sushi in Milpitas Square. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorderwhich Chang rejectedjust two weeks before her suicide. It didn't take him long to propose, but their 1989 engagement stretched out while Brett finished grad school in Urbana. "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 also experienced several miscarriages all said to influence the onset of bipolar disorder. Education Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate. Waking at 5 a.m., Brett saw Iris was gone. ", Iris had convinced her doctor to reduce her dosage. Next to it, now, is a copy of Iris' obituary. But there was none. That night, she had dinner with her husband of 13 years, Brett Douglas. In the picture, Iris was standing, her head bowed in prayer like a saint or an angel. "So they tried to make it harder and harder." Ed Martel's story began on Dec. 7, 1941. Chang will continue her book-signing tour after Saturday's event in Cupertino. theguardian.com. General 1994-2003. . 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."[12]. He framed it and hung it on a wall in his home. "We sat down and started talking, and we had a lot to say. Culliton was sufficiently impressed by Iris' talent to recommend her to Susan Rabiner, editorial director of Basic Books, the "serious nonfiction" division of HarperCollins Publishers. Her last, widely-acclaimed book focused on Chinese immigrants and t heir descendents in the United States their sacrifices, their achievements and their contributions to the fabric of American culture, an epic journey spanning more than 150 years. They met again at Taiwan University -- and yet again when each won a science scholarship to Harvard in 1962. We always had to argue all the exceptions she could think of. Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan really blew the doors open for fiction writers. We need people to be covering atrocities and mental illness and genocide. "Iris was impatient. She went back to bed. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the black-clad tribe of mourners formed a line. But, her father said, "In spite of many sessions, Iris did not tell the therapist her deepest thoughts. The gunsmith told police he had spotted a can of gunpowder in the bag. At 10, she entered a young- author competition and won first place. The other diarist -- the "Anne Frank of Nanking" -- was an Illinois woman named Minnie Vautrin. "Why did he have to toy with me like that?" ", At the same time, torrents of hate mail came in, Brett said. ', In a way Finding Iris Chang is Kamens way of Iris Chang-ing it. Paula Kamen. At the end of the three days, I was making silly little jokes and she was laughing. Hundreds gathered for the memorial service and burial. She believed her phone was tapped. Each breath is becoming difficult for me to takethe anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. It became a surprise best-seller. ", His voice slipped to a whisper. A report from the San Francisco Chronicle stated that news of her suicide had a strong impact on survivors of the Nanking Massacre and the Chinese community in general.[20]. In one often-mentioned incident (as reported by The Times of London): 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". People tend to think that clinical depression is like a bad-hair day. Families, too, have trouble coping. Photos for a profile of Iris Chang, a prominent author and historian, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And then there's the issue of the model minority. The clerk who sold her the gun told investigators Iris had said she collected antique firearms. After eloquent eulogies by family and friends, a tribute written by U. S. Rep. Michael Honda was recited, which he had read into the Congressional Record earlier that week: "Her fierce pride of her Chinese American heritage empowered others with the certainty that they were truly Americans Our community has lost a role model and close friend; the world has lost one of its finest and most passionate advocates of social and historical justice. A local veteran, Arthur Kelly, who was assisting her research helped her check into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, where she was diagnosed with reactive psychosis, placed on heavy medication for three days and then released to her parents. "It's a double-edged sword. "She didn't like other people taking control, so she resisted" his attending any of her therapy sessions. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. Questions hung in the air: -- How could someone with such success, surrounded by loving family and friends, take her own life? Nearby, Bear Creek Road curled up the lonesome hills, thick with black oak. According to the police report, Iris phoned a local gunsmith, an antique firearms specialist who did business from his home. ", Most of the attacks came from Japanese ultranationalists. This post was contributed by a community member. "Iris told me now was not the time to go on with the Bataan project. She never did sleep very well or eat very well.". But the nanny spoke only Mandarin. He went to her desk in her upstairs office and found a note next to the computer. "We are a very close family. "Yes!" "But Iris herself did not believe she was sick." Then, in high school, Iris became determined to revive the school's literary magazine, and quickly enlisted a staff and a sponsor. . By now, Brett was living in Santa Barbara, working toward a doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of California. "Typically, people start losing sleep, then stay up later and later each night. This is for the biographers., Suicide, Kamen observes, is in a lot of ways the ultimate act of control. Books by. In her goodbye note, Iris described her guilt about having allowed her son, Christopher, to be vaccinated before the age of 2. "The stress of writing this book and living with this horror on a daily basis caused my weight to plummet," she said. I promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide. And she loved it. I promise not to hurt myself. As she later told an interviewer, "I wrote 'Rape of Nanking' out of a sense of rage. The correspondent was Sgt. By the time that was done, it was already eight years. The acclaimed author of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, who committed suicide on November 9, "felt other people's suffering so intensely, to the point that it made her suffer," said her friend Barbara Masin in a eulogy delivered at a memorial prior to Chang's burial in Los Altos, California. "But as I was leaving, she got apathetic again. In 1997, Iris Changs The Rape of Nanking was published to great critical acclaim and quickly became a national bestseller. Back in her car, she slipped the gun and owner's manual into a cardboard box labeled "Real Estate Documents" that lay on the passenger seat. He returned to China and went on to develop its missile system. It also showed publishing houses that there is a market for books about the Chinese experience. The water district employee called his supervisor, who called 911. Iris Chang found the inspiration for her new book in 1994 when she came face-to-face with poster-size photographs of Nanking war crimes at a conference in Cupertino. She was mad. But there were untold numbers of women she could not save from capture, torture or death at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Event on 11/19/04 in Los Altos Hills Eric Luse / The Chronicle Ran on: 11-20-2004 But for us to be able to write nonfiction, the stories of our lives -- on a lot of levels, it was revolutionary. "My dad was so excited that she was doing this, and so honored.". Her long-distance engagement to Brett entered its second year. Slowing down, he repeated, "It's interesting. While en route to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where she planned to gain access to a "time capsule" of audio recordings from servicemen, she suffered an extreme bout of depression that left her unable to leave her hotel room in Louisville. She planned to visit Harrodsburg, Ky., where several survivors lived and where an old Bataan-era tank stood sentry in the town square. It may be true that Iris Chang committed suicide. Please reload the page and try again. One picture she sent showed Iris hugging Martel and his wife. "Richard was Iris' friend," said Chang. @TheJohnRylands. Those who survived spent the rest of the war in a bleak prison camp; some were shipped to Japan as slave laborers. It may be true that Iris Chang committed suicide. Chang wrote three books documenting the experiences of Chinese and Chinese Americans in history. [14], R.F. "She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called 'Iris Chang and Her Lies.' ", "Chinese Americans grew up hearing about this forgotten holocaust," said Zia, whose grandmother was killed in Nanking. She went to the Chicago Tribune instead, but didn't enjoy "politicking for assignments," Brett said. But friends say Iris began to voice concerns for her safety. These were considered her finest traits. "No, no! Tsien left for the People's Republic of China in September 1955. Her mother hoped Iris would take on a lighter topic for her next book, especially with a baby in the house. She wrote: "After reading several file cabinets' worth of documents on Japanese war crimes as well as accounts of ancient atrocities from the pantheon of world history, I would have to conclude that Japan's behavior during World War II was less a product of dangerous people than of a dangerous government, in a vulnerable culture, in dangerous times, able to sell dangerous rationalizations to those whose human instincts told them otherwise.". "Iris asked me to tell about atrocities," he said. "Iris was suffering from clinical depression," she said, "and it deepened rapidly over a period of about three months. She just knows how to do things," he said, tenderly smoothing out a page. This put her under enormous stress. [19], When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. I was there for three days and we talked. Theirs was not just a story of war, but of boys becoming men, she said in a transcription of one of her many taped interviews. Ying-Ying is a biochemist. Iris Chang is best known for two things: writing the explosive bestseller "The Rape of Nanking," and then killing herself. He immediately called the police. But the gun jammed. ", Brett voiced a similar conclusion. Another said: "Let us thank her parents. Iris met the man she would marry in 1989, when she was a sophomore in journalism at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Armed Suspect Prompts Lockdown At South Bay Childcare Center, Apple Firing Hundreds Of Contractors: Report, 'Our Planet Live In Concert' 2023: Performing Arts Center, San Jose, Santa Cruz Co. Fairgrounds Foundation All-You-Can-Eat Crab Feed 2023: Watsonville, Mission Valley Chorus All-You-Can-Eat Crab Feed 2023: Campbell, [FREE Event] Get Ready for Senior Year! Iris Chang March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004 As a student of history & a literature hound, Iris Chang's death in 2004 came as a shock. "This was something of a roots venture for her -- to reconnect with the country that her family had drifted off from," said UC Berkeley's Schell. PLEASE VERIFY RIGHTS. Her last Bataan trip was scheduled for July 2004. "I knew Iris was not right," her mother said. January 19, 2023 . Nov. 10, 2004, 7:53 PM PST / Source: The Associated Press. Please forgive me.[21]. It has a terrible reverberating effect. But just in time, Iris changed the subject, prompting him to tell a lighter story. Published by Basic Books on December 1997 (the 60th anniversary of the massacre) and in paperback by Penguin in 1998, "The Rape of Nanking" the first, full-length English-language narrative of the atrocity to reach a wide audience remained on the New York Times bestseller list for several months, became a New York Times Notable Book, and was cited by Bookman Review Syndicate as one of the best books of 1997. Iris Chang's coffen was carried to a waiting hearst and a short drive to the burial site at the cemetary. "For anybody who experiences mental illness for the first time, it's very hard to accept that it is your biology that is making it happen. As a teacher's assistant, she taught a class in creative writing. The official cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot. You're not on a moving train. (The family would not name specific drugs.). Along the way, she married Brett Douglas, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher . One of Iris' best friends, Barbara Masin, came up from Santa Barbara for a long weekend visit. "I walked around in shock," she later wrote. We go through her and her husband's (Brett Douglas) house in San jose. "She would just say, matter-of-factly, 'Japan is lying and here's why.' He thought Iris was improving.". "Most authors are worn out after five or six cities." "A lot of people -- depending on how disturbed they are -- feel that people are plotting against them." ", The Gate of Heaven was well named. Background Iris Chang was born on March 28, 1968, Princeton, New Jersey, to a family of Taiwan migrants. ", Iris took her advice, though the book she began was enormously ambitious. One month later, on Saturday, Dec. 11, the same elegant photograph of Iris was displayed at a memorial honoring her on the 67th anniversary of the invasion of Nanking. ", The book rocketed Iris into the pantheon of American intellectuals. And she believed her research produced irrevocable proof of Japanese atrocities. There is always free will. "Iris wanted to talk, and I said, 'You should go to bed, it's 2 in the morning.' The news hit Nanjing fast and hard. Event on 11/16/04 in San Jose. Iris Chang wrote those lines in 1978, when she was 10, and 19 years before her harrowing book, The Rape of Nanking, brought her worldwide acclaim. But Kamens book, unlike, say, Truth & Beauty, novelist Ann Patchetts controversial memoir of her thorny friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy, relies very little upon navel-gazing rumination. In a single blinding moment I recognized the fragility of not just life but the human experience itself.". I would tell her, 'You can care too much about what people say about you.' "Though I had heard so much about the Nanking massacre as a child, nothing prepared me for these pictures -- stark black-and-white images of decapitated heads, bellies ripped open and nude women forced by their rapists into various pornographic poses, their faces contorted into unforgettable expressions of agony and shame. She knew that in California, she could purchase a relic immediately and avoid the 10-day waiting period necessary with other guns. [13], Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work, The Chinese in America. 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 . Iris Shun-Ru Chang was a Chinese-American historian and journalist. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me. Everything points to suicide.". The group meets to address important issues concerning the Chinese-American community, as well as issues affecting U.S.-China relations on 5/5/03 in New York. "We went to see 'Ray,' " Brett said. She hadn't ever heard much of Ray Charles' music before, and when we got home, she went upstairs and was browsing all kinds of information on Ray Charles on the Internet.". When she tried finding books about the subject in Champaign Public Library, she found there were none.[3]. They had spent one hour together. While on the ship home, she tried repeatedly to leap overboard. "We spoke for two hours, from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m.," Rabiner said. Thinking the driver must be asleep, he got out of his car and banged on the hood. She attended University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and graduated in 1985. We've seen staged suicides and we've seen homicides. She called this the most important lesson to be learned from the tragedy of Nanking. But Douglas finally told Kamen that Christopher had been born with the help of a surrogate mother. "Most lived in dark, squalid apartments cluttered with the debris of poverty and heavy with mildew and humidity," she wrote. Iris Chang's coffin was carried to a waiting hearse to be brought to the grave site at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking, ended her life with a pistol on November 9, 2004. It was later discovered that she had left behind three suicide notes each dated November 8, 2004. 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. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004, when she was just 36 years old. Many families sent me emails after reading my book," said Chang, citing an example of a couple shocked by the suicide of their daughter, a Stanford graduate who seemed to have a bright future. "He could tell that she was a lot different after she came back from Louisville. "I'd left a message -- I actually had business to talk about. $ 4.79 - $ 21.29. She easily passed the 20 exams necessary to qualify, only to be told that she must take five more. And maybe more than the first two books I wrote combined, too.. . She preferred to meet someone in each town who could introduce her to the veterans and their families. She was trying to be a top-notch mother and she was also trying to prepare for her trip.". In her international bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking," Chang examined one of the most tragic chapters of World War II: the mass execution of soldiers and theslaughter, rape and torture oftens of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in the former capital of China. Those close to Iris had always seen her ups and downs as part of the natural cycle of a brilliant person with intense drive, passionate commitment and a capacity for hard work. Iris Chang interview, Barbara Simpson show, KSFO radio, San Francisco, California 1998 November 8. Some of Changs friends blamed the relentless pace of her work. John Rylands Research Institute and Library. Whoops! Along with fear for her safety, Iris' illness generated feelings of self- blame. [2] The book, "Thread of the Silkworm," was published in 1995. She walked through the whooshing automatic doors and turned right. Liz Mangelsdorf / The Chronicle. I was not alone in eating Iris dust, Kamen noted ruefully in an essay she wrote for Salon shortly after Changs death. In her last call to Kamen, Chang had alluded to highly placed people who didnt like her once again digging into Japanese atrocities during World War II. Her mother concurred: "At AP, she worked so hard she couldn't sleep. The report stated that Iris had been taking two medications: the mood stabilizer Depakote, an anticonvulsant similar to lithium; and a smaller dosage of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug commonly used to control mania, which is also thought to reduce suicide risk. We didn't see each other as much as we did in the past. They made an appointment to meet Wednesday at the firing range. "I wanted to give support to families that suffered the same kind of loss, and it really worked in that way. It happens every day of the week, and people just don't know it because people don't talk about it.". ", When Zia and Iris met for the first time, they planned a quick lunch. Hundreds gathered for the memorial service and burial. Services; Expertise; Our Clients; Book Deep Cleaning . ". We are lucky -- she could tell me everything she felt. She lived in San Jose, California in the final years of her life.[6][7]. Somehow, she always bounced back, energized by her role as spokesperson for a movement. She passed the football field and the blocky, concrete auditorium of James Lick High School. Minnie Vautrin, also an alum of U. of I. in Urbana-Champaign, was a missionary and educator who saved thousands of Chinese lives during the Japanese occupation. Among her many television appearances was a memorable evening on "Nightline," where she was the only Asian and the only woman among a panel of China experts. At the same time, her foes said her suicide proved that "Rape of Nanking" was nothing but lies. 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