Today marks 20 years since the death of Iris Chang, author of “The Rape of Nanking” that brought a knowledge of the Nanjing Massacre to a broad international audience after its publication in 1997. Today is marked here in Nanjing, Chang’s home of the USA and elsewhere.
The origins of The Rape of Nanking were sown when Chang was a child. Her parents would often talk about what happened in 1937 in a city called Nanjing on the other side of the Pacific and how the Yangtze River was dyed red with blood.
Seeing black-and-white photos of the Nanjing Massacre for the first time in California in December, 1994, Chang felt extremely angry. She found that not a single book mentioned this period in history that to her should have never been forgotten. Chang noted that almost all Westerners were familiar with the crimes of Adolf Hitler, but no one knew about the Massacre carried out by the Japanese in China.
Later, many in the USA would think it was incredible that a young girl spend several years writing a history book, since society expected her to make money and start a family. However, the then 25-year old Chang said, “I don’t care whether this book makes money or not. For me, I just want to let everyone in the world know what happened in Nanjing in 1937”.
The impact of The Rape of Nanking is impossible to overstate. Not only did the book remain on the New York Times’ bestseller list for 10 weeks, almost all who read it would go on to recommend it to their friends, bringing it to an ever-expanding audience. It’s a phenomenon that continues to this day.
Translated as the book was in to multiple languages and reprinted more than ten times in the following years, Chang found herself immediately in the media’s spotlight, coming to be greatly in demand as a speaker and interviewee, known for her tireless efforts at keeping the memory of the Nanjing Massacre alive at a global level.
Chang’s blockbuster, published on the Massacre’s 60th anniversary, was motivated in part by her own grandparents’ recollections of their escape from the atrocities. Chang’s grandfather would go on to become Editor in Chief of China Daily in Taiwan.
Utilising the then-recently discovered diaries by both John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin chronicling the Massacre in detail and multiple other resources gathered during her visits from the USA to Nanjing, Chang had the energy, will and engaging writing style to make the subject matter come alive to a populist worldwide audience.
Chang also served as an inspiration to many in Nanjing, so much so that upon her death, survivors of the Massacre held a service at the Memorial Hall at the same time as the funeral itself in Cupertino, California, on 12 November, 2004.
Still here in Nanjing, 1 month and 1 day from that day, the Memorial Hall will hold its annual service to mark what will be 87th anniversary of the commencement of the 6-week long terror that constituted the Nanjing Massacre. “History of the 20th Century” (Purnell & Sons, Ltd., 1968) describes the Massacre as “Nanking being sacked in a manner that recalled tales of Ghengis Khan and Tamburlaine [the Conqueror]”.
Many in Nanjing and around the world still regard the events of 13 December, 1937, in Nanjing as the true start of World War II.
Today, the Memorial Hall, which added a wing dedicated to Chang the year after her death, remains keen to acquire as much material evidencing the Massacre from around the world as possible, that which may even now still be lurking in the dust-covered collections of veterans’ descendants.
Chang herself, born in Princeton, New Jersey, to grow up in Illinois, had Huaiyin District of Huai’an City in our very own Jiangsu as her ancestral home where there remains the Iris Chang Memorial Hall (张纯如纪念馆). A writer, historian, human-rights activist and journalist, Chang worked as a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Associated Press in 1995. She held a master’s degree in writing from John Hopkins University.
Constantly haunted by her discoveries and that surrounding them which came to her in the aftermath, often trembling in anger at the memory and the regular recipient of threatening letters and phone calls, Chang committed suicide on 9 November, 2004. While she left behind her husband and 2-year old son, on this special day her legacy remains, as it will do, for all time.
