In tribute to Chang, the survivors held a service at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, around the same time as her funeral, held at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos, California on November 12, 2004. The Memorial Hall, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, added both a wing and a bronze statue dedicated to Chang in 2005. a b c d "Japan and the U.S.: Sidelining the Heterodox". Japan Policy Research Institute. December 2002. Archived from the original on 2004-03-23 . Retrieved 2007-07-22. Her third book, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (2003), [11] is a history of Chinese Americans, that argues their treatment as perpetual outsiders by American society. Consistent with the style of her earlier works, the book relies heavily on personal accounts, drawing its strong emotional content from their stories. 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] Public notability and legacy [ edit ] In reference to the photo that shows women and children walking across a bridge with Japanese soldiers, she wrote:

The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon)Timothy M. Kelly, former professor of religious studies at Edogawa University, [44] alleged that her book contained plagiarized passages. [45] a b McLaughlin, Kathleen E. (2004-11-20). "Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help — the survivors of Japan's 'Rape of Nanking' ". SFGate . Retrieved 2007-07-21. As a social studies teacher, I have taught aspects of World War II on numerous occasions. Additionally, I teach classes such as Intolerance and Human Rights that cover the Holocaust. Last year, I even taught a nine-weeks class solely on the Holocaust. As I teach those classes, I generally take a factual approach in my presentations about what happened in that era of world history. Because of this, I feel as though I have been somewhat desensitized to the horrors that took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, when I took my students to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. last June, I know I was not as emotionally affected as most other visitors. However, my stoic approach to World War II came screeching to a halt as I opened the front cover of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking. This book tells the story of “the forgotten holocaust of World War II,” and although it has faced many criticisms, it serves Chang’s hope to “inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of Nanking survivors before the last voices of the past…are extinguished forever.” (Chang 16). The particular value of this text, in my opinion is twofold. First, I think it was important for the story of the 1937 Rape of Nanking to be told to mainstream western audiences. As Chang laments, this story has not received half as much attention as massacres that were less violent and killed less people. Second, I think it is a great contribution to our historical studies that she interviewed so many victims and perpetrators first hand (though, as various historians critique, she does little to sift through the information fed to her in these interviews).

Chang grew up hearing stories about the Nanjing massacre, from which her maternal grandparents escaped. When she tried finding books about the subject in Champaign Public Library, she found there were none. [3] Lamb, Brian, interviewer. 11 January 1998. " The Rape of Nanking" (video and transcript). Booknotes. US: C-Span. Also available on C-Span.

a b Foreword by William C. Kirby, in: Iris Chang (1998). The Rape of Nanking. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-465-06835-9. The book attempts to explain the events leading up to and during the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers that occurred in the city of Nanking, China from 1937-1938. Overall the book is very clear and well written and the reader comes away with a general understanding of the event and also pondering the questions of how humanity can be suspended in times of war. Book review of The Rape of Nanking". University of the West of England. Archived from the original on 2008-12-11 . Retrieved 2007-07-23. Did you know? Once one of China's most prosperous cities and industrial centers, Nanjing took decades to recover from the devastation it experienced in the Rape of Nanjing. Abandoned as the national capital in 1949 for Beijing, it later grew into a modern industrial city during the communist period and today is home to many of China's largest state-owned firms. Beatrice S. Bartlett". Yale University. Archived from the original on September 20, 2006 . Retrieved 2007-07-21.

Citing the phenomena of "transfer of oppression", she points out that the Japanese army possessed great potential for brutality from its very inception because of the brutality that Japanese officers exacted on their own soldiers, in an attempt to harden them. She further argues for social status as a source of power, but this did not successfully convince me that she, or anyone else for that matter, knows why there is such violence, so carefully organized, and so completely accepted by so many at one time. Robert Entenmann". St. Olaf College. Archived from the original on 2007-07-05 . Retrieved 2007-07-23. De Pasquale, Sue (November 1997). "Nightmare in Nanking". Johns Hopkins Magazine . Retrieved November 24, 2018. Outside of Japan many know that the Japanese Empire was terrible. It was marked with savagery and acts of cowardly violence against the unarmed and innocent. But today many Japanese barely know the details of the savagery their government committed. They understand that they were defeated and see the fire bombing and atomic devastation of cities as punishment for such.Chang wrote three books documenting the experiences of the Chinese in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her first book, entitled Thread of the Silkworm (1995), tells the story of the Chinese professor, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and had helped the US military to debrief scientists from Nazi Germany for many years, he was falsely accused of being both a spy and a member of the Communist Party USA, and was thus placed under house arrest from 1950 until his deportation to the People's Republic of China in September 1955. Upon his return to China, Tsien developed the Dongfeng missile and later the Silkworm missile which would be used by the Iraqi military not only during its war on Iran but (ironically) against the US-led coalitions during Gulf Wars I and II.

Heath, Thomas (2006-07-31). "Ted Leonsis Takes a Sharp Turn". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2007-07-22. Iris Chang received hate mail, death threats and academic scorn following her publication of The Rape of Nanking in 1997. Chang had spent considerable time and energy researching the book, hoping that her work could bring attention to a horrific time that seemed to somehow have been lost in the history books – a winter and spring of unimaginable horror in 1937 and 1938 following the Japanese capture and occupation of the Chinese city of Nanking.So, I have no problem believing that the incidents Chang chronicles and the eyewitness and diary accounts she relates are true. I am also enough of a historian to recognize that she wrote the book as a journalist not as a historian. That belief does not lessen the importance of what she has done in trying to lift the veil from an episode the Japanese would love to have the world forget. The other diary belonged to Minnie Vautrin, the American missionary who saved the lives of about 10,000 women and children when she provided them with shelter in Ginling College. [20] Vautrin's diary recounts her personal experience and feelings on the Nanjing Massacre; in it, an entry reads, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." [21] It was used as source material by Hua-ling Hu for a biography of Vautrin and her role during the Nanjing Massacre, entitled American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin. [22] Chang's research led her to make what one San Francisco Chronicle article called "Significant Discoveries" on the subject of the Nanjing Massacre, in the forms of the diaries of two Westerners who were in Nanjing leading efforts to save lives during the Japanese invasion. [5] The diaries documented the events of the Nanjing Massacre from the perspectives of their writers, and provided detailed accounts of atrocities that they saw, as well as information surrounding the circumstances of the Nanking Safety Zone. In the US, a Chinese garden in Norfolk, Virginia, which contains a memorial to Minnie Vautrin, added a memorial dedicated to Chang, including her as the latest victim of the Nanjing Massacre, and drawing parallels between Chang and Vautrin, who also took her own life. [55] Vautrin exhausted herself trying to protect women and children during the Nanjing Massacre and subsequently during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940. She returned to the US for medical treatment, committing suicide a year later. [20] Editions [ edit ] English