So you see, she was really a fighter. Iris told her mother that working on it was a vacation after "Rape of Nanking. This was not her first visit. Then she got back up again. The war she lost raged withinby Heidi Benson. She was 36. I got off the phone confused and concerned, but I was too unsophisticated about psychological problems to realize that she was saying goodbye to me. It read: "I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. As a teacher's assistant, she taught a class in creative writing. Photos for a profile of Iris chang, a prominenet author and historian, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. ", Their son, who had turned 2 years old in August, became aware of a change. "It was family lore. As that November afternoon darkened into evening, the Changs sat at their Danish-modern dining room table and told stories about Iris, speaking sometimes in past tense and sometimes in present tense. . Her maternal grandparents had escaped just weeks before the Japanese arrived. Iris Chang is best known for two things: writing the explosive bestseller "The Rape of Nanking," and then killing herself. It caused an international scandal because the Japanese to this day have not conceded the extent of the wartime atrocities perpetrated against the Chinese and others. But as she began to manifest symptoms of bipolar illness, she perceived them as a failure of will. $ 4.69 - $ 6.59. This is for the biographers., Suicide, Kamen observes, is in a lot of ways the ultimate act of control. On Saturday night they went to dinner at Fresh Choice and out to the movies. It's a disease. They went to bed at midnight. It was very painful for me to think about, even then. Now, in THE CHINESE IN AMERICA: A Narrative History (Viking; On-sale Date: April 28, 2003) Chang explores the history of one of this countrys fastest growing ethnic groups. In a single blinding moment I recognized the fragility of not just life but the human experience itself.". "I urged her to talk with someone -- either Brett, or me, or someone. ", "Iris truly had no fear. "She's very strong- willed," her mother said. 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. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. The foyer was filled with enormous bouquets sent by well-wishers. Forgive me because I cannot forgive myself.". Kamen says that despite her worldliness, Chang never developed the distancing filters that aid many journalists. virginia men's lacrosse roster. And maybe more than the first two books I wrote combined, too.. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate. Her parents saw her off that morning. "I'd left a message -- I actually had business to talk about. On the day of Iris Chang's death, word spread quickly over news wires and the Internet. Iris had been haunted since childhood by the graphic stories she was told about Nanking. She walked through the whooshing automatic doors and turned right. iris changs family But all of them wanted the opportunity to talk about the massacre before their deaths. 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 insisted she had already passed. So, in return for performing a short, Chaplinesque shuffle, he would be rewarded with a handful of scallions. Iris Chang. It may be true that Iris Chang committed suicide. Later, Brett learned that the nanny had urged Iris to cancel the trip. She would talk about her achievements openly, and people saw her as putting them down or bragging, when it was really that she believed there was enough success to go around., A Canadian documentary about Chang is in the works and two statues honoring her have been erected since her deathone at Stanford, the other at a memorial to the Nanking massacre in whats now called Nanjing, where another woman from Illinois is honored. She was too strong-willed not to.". -- Did she suffer a fatal reaction to powerful drugs that she refused to take as prescribed? 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]. The revolver lay on her left leg. "This high school alone lost 200 students -- 28 were with the Bataan company. "We spoke for two hours, from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m.," Rabiner said. The first draft said: "When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. Iris learned to read at age 4. She offered to pay Basic Books to publish it. ", The book's popularity meant a lengthy book tour. Event on 11/16/04 in San Jose. Ying-Ying is a biochemist. She recalls their voices quivering in outrage, as the two university scientists talked of Japanese soldiers slicing Chinese babies into thirds and fourths. Sunday morning, they drove to Santa Cruz for lunch on the pier, then went to her favorite spa, Chaminade -- a 300-acre mission-style resort, surrounded by redwoods and eucalyptus, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. FINDING IRIS CHANG: FRIENDSHIP, AMBITION, AND THE LOSS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MIND She easily passed the 20 exams necessary to qualify, only to be told that she must take five more. Brett soon grew concerned that Iris was overextended. 36 year-old Iris Chang, the prominent Chinese American author and journalist who wrote the best-selling . 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. They made an appointment. She asked if Iris had any friends there she could call for help. Newsweek ran an excerpt, and soon Iris was a familiar face on TV news shows. "Civilization is tissue thin," Iris wrote. That such a beautiful woman would be remembered is not unusual. "Iris told me now was not the time to go on with the Bataan project. There are so many kids his age here. Iris Chang died on November 9, 2004. I know that my actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who love me the most. "It's been too short.". At 12:40 p.m., she stopped for lunch at FujiSan Sushi in Milpitas Square. The Nanking book had "made Iris sad. But there has to be dialogue about how to do that in the long term., In All in My Head, Kamen documents how she learned to slow down and come to terms with a life of chronic pain. Iris' reluctance to take medication may indicate the difficulty she had accepting her illness as an illness. The first was John Rabe, a German member of the Nazi party who was living in the Chinese capital in 1937. "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. He was misled by Iris. ", During two years of research, Iris made significant historical discoveries. It was obvious she wasn't the same person that she was before," he said. ", "Chinese Americans grew up hearing about this forgotten holocaust," said Zia, whose grandmother was killed in Nanking. [2] Ultimately, three notes were found, all dated Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. "The onus is on us, as Western medical professionals, to be aware of cultural influences -- and to be proactive in educating family members and the patient when there is a first encounter with mental illness," he said. And that really took its toll on her, too.". 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. "Iris was very loving," Martel's daughter said. Chang had returned to World War II for the book she was working on when she died, interviewing survivors of the Bataan Death March who were, like the Chinese, demanding an official apology from the Japanese government. The next morning, Friday, Nov. 19, dawned cold, clear and sunny. Iris Chang - The woman who loved truth. Chang said she usually gives three reasons for her unconventional decision to write her daughter's biography: to commemorate Iris, to tell Iris' son, Christopher Douglas, all about the. But there was none. Christopher R . Want to post on Patch? Upon his return to China, Tsien developed the Dongfeng missile program, and later the Silkworm missile, which was used by the Iraqi military during its war on Iran and against the United States-led coalitions during the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The whole process, how she planned everything, is very, very methodical., Kamen says Chang never understood how her drive pissed people off. It has a terrible reverberating effect. 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. Born in China, educated at M.I.T. "The stress of writing this book and living with this horror on a daily basis caused my weight to plummet," she said. She got from the airport to the hotel, but that was all she could do. "I had to write it, if it was the last thing I ever did in my life. She passed the iron gates of Calvary Catholic Cemetery, where marble statues of winged angels, their heads bowed in prayer, mark the graves of early settlers. It was well- reviewed, though it never sold in great numbers. She was very depressed." Iris Shun-Ru Chang was born March 28, 1968, in Princeton Hospital, on the university campus in New Jersey where her parents were doing postdoctoral work. They made an appointment to meet Wednesday at the firing range. Chang said she did some research on the psychiatric drugs and the antidepressants Iris took in the months between a temporary nervous breakdown and her suicide. One speaker called Iris "a hero for those muffled by injustice." Please forgive me. That night, she had dinner with her husband of 13 years, Brett Douglas. THEY ARE AT THE CHINESE AMERICAN MENTAL HEALTH NETWORK SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER / CULTURE TO CULTURE FOUNDATION. Iris Shun-Ru Chang was born on March 28, 1968, in Princeton, N.J. She grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where her father, a physicist, and her mother, a microbiologist, taught at the University . Tsien was a top physicist at Cal-Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was deported during the Red scare of the 1950s. "People who are in great treatment, who have all the love and support in the world, can still commit suicide," Jamison, author of "Understanding Suicide," has said. 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. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004. Reader's Digest devoted a cover story to her. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the black-clad tribe of mourners formed a line. Iris Chang loved life, her mother said: "I want people to know Iris, not just her suicide. 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. Speculation that she may have been killed by Japanese ultranationalists continued to turn up on Web logs and Internet chat rooms. Between eulogies, a guitarist played "Let It Be." 1837 brunswick rifle I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. But this time, "she appeared unhappy," the manager told investigators. "She also liked to beat the system. In 1995, at age 27, Chang flew from California to Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu province. Chang's first book, "Thread of the Silkworm," a critically acclaimed and engrossing study of how Cold War hysteria influenced American foreign policy, tells the ironic story of Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen (). A lot of people misunderstood her in that way. . When I read The Rape of Nanking, I was struck by the parallels in the lives of these two women, Minnie and Iris, Kamen writes. . Iris Chang (), before her untimely death, was one of America's leading young historians. "There is no way that a family member could sort out all the details, let alone their own feelings, because they're connected to the person," Dr. he cried. For the Wisconsin trip, she had hooked up with people from the Bataan Commemorative Research Project, a historical archive and Web site created by faculty and students at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Ill. "World War II hit the town of Maywood really hard," said Ian Smith, chair of the school's history department. In three days, her parents came to take her home. Iris Chang, a best-selling author who chronicled the Japanese occupation of China and the history of Chinese immigrants in the United . Iris Chang received several other awards, including the Woman of the Year award from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation Award. She found the diaries of a pair of Westerners who were among the heroes of Nanking. The Highway Patrol then called the Santa Clara Sheriff's homicide unit and detective Sgt. On top of that, she wasn't sleeping. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Iris discovered this group of Chinese American activists after she and Brett moved to Northern California when he got a job with Cisco Systems. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT, Restaurant chain slated to close site at Bay Area mall, Grapevine closed indefinitely due to heavy snow and ice, Graupel falls on Disneyland, shocks guests, Plan to bring bullet train from LA to Vegas is underway, What it looks like inside Coit Towers former apartment, One of the largest movie theaters in SF to close permanently, Hundreds of thousands of workers have abandoned downtown SF, Avalanche slams into Tahoe apartment building amid blizzard, Tahoe's snowfall totals are on track to break records, 'Zero visibility' conditions: All roads to Tahoe are closed, Popular yet divisive fast food chain coming to this Bay Area town, Report: Matthew McConaughey has a massive Salesforce paycheck, 14 things you need in your car before you drive to Tahoe. 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! Home Deep Cleaning . 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 . The other diarist -- the "Anne Frank of Nanking" -- was an Illinois woman named Minnie Vautrin. "But the side effect of psychiatric drugs changed her personality and prompted her to go that route.". Rumors swirled in the early days after her suicide. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004) was an American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. 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. "Iris was a very strong person, even when she was depressed," said Brett. She went back to bed. On August 31, 2002, Christopher Douglas, their son, was born. Liz Mangelsdorf / The Chronicle. Each breath is becoming difficult for me to takethe anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. Though troubling to realize, those things that protect us most -- faith, family, health, financial stability -- are often powerless against mental illness. But Douglas finally told Kamen that Christopher had been born with the help of a surrogate mother. In early 2004, she traveled to promote the paperback version of "The Chinese in America." The Rape of Nanking remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks. She asked me if I was religious -- I said I wasn't, not at all. Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take -- the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. box 314, folder 4 . I knew immediately I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.". The lead balls must be individually prepared, packed with gunpowder and topped with a percussive cap. "A lot of people -- depending on how disturbed they are -- feel that people are plotting against them." She worked briefly as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune before completing a graduate degree in writing from the Johns Hopkins University and launching her career as a full-time author and lecturer. She had worn herself out on a book tour for the paperback release of The Chinese in America and spent some time in a mental health ward in Kentucky in August 2004. She was an able journalist, but she allowed herself to become deeply involved emotionally in her subjects, which gave her accessibility. In her goodbye note, Iris described her guilt about having allowed her son, Christopher, to be vaccinated before the age of 2. With few rations, little ammunition and no reinforcements, 70,000 American and Filipino troops held off the Japanese for months. "Iris thought it was an injustice. I didn't really care if I made a cent from it. The coroner's report, dated Dec. 23, 2004, stated: "Based on the medical investigator's report and the autopsy findings, Iris Chang, a 36-year-old Asian female, died from a self-inflicted intra-oral gunshot wound. "Iris was really good at putting her best face forward, even when she was totally exhausted, so I didn't really perceive that there was a real problem," Brett said. Robert Spencer / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT, iris chang and bataan march survivor ed martel and his wife courtesy ed martel, THIS IS A HANDOUT IMAGE. Title Type Publication date Author(s) Description; Document:The Mysterious Deaths of Ernest Hemingway and Iris Chang: article: 1 August 2011: ", Then she wrote a suicide note -- addressed to her parents, Brett and her brother -- followed by a lengthy revision. . In her book, Kamen recalls how Chang approached an editor on one of her first days at the U. of I.s Daily Illini and asked simplywithout small talk or polite conversationHow do I get your job? After a breakdown five months ago, Chang had been. We'll be sending you The Daily Reader starting soon. "Yes!" 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. Her head rested against the window. Andrew Nickolds obituary. Christopher Douglas Retweeted. My friends and I would joke about the obituary assignments at a paper being the stiffs page. I could never picture her having any kind of irony like that about her work., Kamen herself says that diving into the darker reaches of Changs life was frightening at first. Nov. 10, 2004, 7:53 PM PST / Source: The Associated Press. "Iris always came to us to discuss her problems," her mother said. ", Baker explained his conclusion: "There's no evidence that any kind of conspiracy caused her death. The author, who committed suicide nearly 10 years later, saw a graphic photo exhibition of the 1937 Japanese attack on Nanking civilians and felt an urge to publicize the almost-buried atrocity to the world, according to her mother, Ying-Ying Chang. Somehow, she always bounced back, energized by her role as spokesperson for a movement. He could see the travel was taking a toll on her. Anthony Meldahl, a supply sergeant with the Ohio National Guard who had admired Iris' work. Most lived in poverty so crushing that even a minimal amount of financial compensation from Japan could have greatly improved the conditions of their lives. Those who survived spent the rest of the war in a bleak prison camp; some were shipped to Japan as slave laborers. ", Rabiner said Iris "found her voice" in promoting "Rape of Nanking." Iris Shun-Ru Chang was a Chinese-American historian and journalist. You have a young kid. "We went to see 'Ray,' " Brett said. While on the ship home, she tried repeatedly to leap overboard. "It's going to be very emotional to talk about Iris in Cupertino," said Chang. I didn't know if I'd hear from her again." Brett said, "It was, I think, 21 cities in 28 days. "I spent several hours with each one, getting the details of their experiences on videotape. "They had a big fight," he said. Box. Though Iris had previously suffered what her parents called "down" periods after bouts of intense exertion, the lows were never as extreme as what befell her in Kentucky. Martel cried, "You son of a bitch! By the time that was done, it was already eight years. He went to her desk in her upstairs office and found a note next to the computer. Kamen, the author of three previous books (Feminist Fatale, on Third Wave feminism; Her Way, a study of womens sexuality in the 1990s; and All in My Head, about her years-long struggle with chronic pain), says with Chang as her subject she wanted to focus on the dark side, the complexities and tensions we had with each other.. It's a shame these atrocities had to be happened in the hands of Japanese. "We saw cartoons where she was portrayed as this woman with a great big mouth," Brett said. SHAU-JIN CHANG (FATHER), left, AND YING-YING CHANG (MOTHER), PARENTS OF IRIS CHANG, WHO COMMITTED SUICIDE IN NOVEMBERR 2004. 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