HISTORY

Today in Chinese American History - March 28, 1968

Iris Chang was one of America’s finest historians, and one of its best social and historical justice advocates. Chang wrote several books on Chinese and Chinese Americans as a way to get justice for them in the eyes of history, even if so many victims hadn’t received that justice in life.

Her first book in 1995, “Thread of the Silkworm,” told the story of Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, a well respected pioneer in rockets and in his developments for US space exploration as well as a founder of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He loyally served the United States for 15 years but during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, he was falsely labeled a Communist because of his ethnicity, held in isolation without charge for 5 years, and then deported to China in a prisoner exchange for other Americans captured during the Korean War. With no other choices about his future work in China he eventually became known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry.” Among the developments he led was the Silkworm missile that later threatened American troops fighting in the First Gulf War in 1990-91. Undersecretary of the U.S. Navy Dan Kimball at the time of his deportation commented “It was the stupidest thing this country ever did...he was no more a Communist than I was and we forced him to go.” The mistreatment of Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen was later compared to the U.S. Government’s mistreatment of Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos nuclear scientist accused of passing secret nuclear warhead data to China in 1999 who was later found completely innocent of all such espionage charges.

In “The Chinese in America: A Narrative History,” published in 2003, through the use of personal stories, Iris Chang wrote about the epic history of Chinese Americans that spans more than 150 years. Telling more than just about their sacrifices and suffering, the book is also about Chinese Americans and their contributions to America and their achievements in building it. Chinese first arrived in the U.S. in the 1850s, fleeing the Taiping Rebellion and rural poverty, with hopes that “Gold Mountain” would help them realize their dreams. Few found success in the gold fields of California but contributed more to America through their work building the Central Pacific Railroad, their knowledge of how to build irrigation ditches and farms, and by setting an example about how to survive and fight against the overt racism of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the violence directed against them. In modern America, Chang also wrote about the struggles of today’s Chinese Americans at the crossroads of assimilation; some as millionaires living the American Dream, while others are Chinese “parachute children” struggling to construct their own identity between worlds as they live in America while their parents live overseas.

With “The Rape of Nanking”, her best-selling book published in 1997, Chang took a different direction and revealed the atrocities of the Japanese against the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 in the city of Nanking (now known as Nanjing.) Chang detailed how the siege and occupation of the city resulted in the deaths of about 300,000 Chinese — mostly innocent civilians who were bayoneted, machine-gunned and burned alive. Japanese soldiers raped tens of thousands of women and girls. It was only after Iris Chang’s book came out that many in the Western World found out about “the forgotten holocaust.”

To write this book, Chang had to use all her energy, will, and engaging writing style to make the massacre come alive to a popular audience in the West. Traveling through China and challenging the U.S. for classified documents, she exposed the hidden stories of atrocities committed nearly 70 years before. Chang’s book inspired new efforts to seek official acknowledgment of those crimes and apologies from the Japanese government as well as compensation for the ever dwindling number of elderly survivors. In many ways, Chang was the last hope for many of these people to tell their stories and share what they had witnessed.

The intense involvement Chang brought to her books and to her subjects showed in her writing. She worked hard and put a piece of herself into every story she covered. As she was working on her fourth book, covering the suffering of U.S. soldiers held prisoner by the Japanese during the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in World War II, she began to get sick. She was then diagnosed with depression and was treated but on November 9, 2004, Iris Chang committed suicide.

The path she began tracing in pursuit of historical justice, however, was still being followed by her parents in 2009, more specifically, her mother. After Chang’s death, Ying-Ying Chang continued her daughter’s work trying to persuade the Japanese government to apologize for the crimes of their troops during the war, and to pay the survivors compensation. She also continued the travels of her daughter around the world educating people about the Nanking Massacre.

Both of her parents are also involved in an international essay contest in memory of their daughter that encourages young people to think about war and peace. The yearly contest is called the Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest and it is run by the Iris Chang Memorial Foundation. The foundation, which was created in 2006, has the mission of carrying out Chang’s unfinished dreams and of preserving Chang’s legacy by teaching the importance of remembering history, by raising awareness about “the forgotten holocaust,” and by supporting research on Asian war history.

After Iris Chang’s death, a statue of life-sized proportion was erected in Nanjing in her memory. In 2005, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, added a wing dedicated to Chang. At the Hoover Institution at Stanford University a bust of her was also unveiled in her honor.

To date, several movies have been made about her and her work. “Iris Chang, the Rape of Nanking” was a feature length documentary that told Iris Chang’s story. “Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind” by Paula Kamen was a book explaining the mental illness that led to her suicide.

Iris Chang’s work, from “Thread of a Silkworm,” to the unfinished book on the Bataan Death March, has affected the history of Chinese and Chinese Americans. Although many still wait for justice, at least some of their stories have been told, and justice might come one day, thanks to Chang’s dedication and her work.