Iris Chang

This is an article written by a friend of Iris Chang, the amazing historian who committed suicide last week...

Posted on Mon, Nov. 15, 2004
Iris Chang's death robs the world of a courageous geniusBy Jeff GuinnStar-Telegram Books Editor

At 36, my friend Iris Chang was acknowledged as one of America's best young historians. She had written three books, including the controversial The Rape of Nanking, a national bestseller in 1999. She had a husband and a 2-year-old son. She was brilliant, breathtakingly beautiful and young enough to have her best years ahead as a human being and as a writer. She apparently killed herself last Tuesday morning with a gunshot to the head.

Iris' death is a terrible loss -- to her family most of all, but also to those who want and need to know about some of the most inconvenient parts of history, the iniquities and outright atrocities that too often are deliberately forgotten. Fourteen months ago in Fort Worth, she alternately charmed and shocked an audience at Scott Theatre as she explained why she chose to write about massacres (Nanking) and long-term, ongoing racial discrimination (The Chinese in America).

"I try to tell the stories that many people will neglect or ignore," Iris said. "I've always felt that in every writer there is something that dictates the theme of what she writes. For me, that's injustice."

She told those stories effectively. Shortly before his own death, the author Stephen Ambrose called Iris "maybe the best young historian we've got, because she understands that to communicate history, you've got to tell the story in an interesting way."

Because her books generated so much controversy, it was inevitable she would have detractors, too. Since The Rape of Nanking's publication, some have claimed it was written as anti-Japanese propaganda or that its description of atrocities committed during the city's occupation in 1937 were exaggerated. Yet she never backed down. Politely, firmly, she defended her research and conclusions. On one occasion, she appeared on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer with the Japanese ambassador to the United States and stated that the Japanese government had never apologized for its country's crimes in Nanking. The ambassador responded that perhaps there had been "unfortunate incidents." Iris' reply was, " 'Unfortunate incidents'? Did you hear an apology? I didn't."

Yet there was an immense softness to her as well, a genuine empathy for others. If she felt sweeping indignation for the actions of some, she felt equally intense pain for the suffering of victims, and I believe this is what eventually caused her to take her own life. We talked about this quite often, a few times in person, more often by phone or e-mail. She would discuss her most recent research efforts -- lately, she was preparing a book on Japanese mistreatment of war prisoners in the Bataan Peninsula -- and she never seemed quite able to adopt a scholar's emotional distance from her subjects. Apparently, at some point a few months ago on a research trip, the agony she felt for all those whose sufferings she chronicled finally caught up with her.

She returned home to California, was treated for depression and never really recovered. Her suicide note asked that she be remembered as she was before her illness.

Iris Chang was a genius, the most brilliant intellect I have ever encountered. The advantage of genius is the ability to know and feel things to a greater degree than everyone else. But that's the penalty of genius, too. You lose the ability to compartmentalize, to put harmful things out of your mind, at least for a little while. I'm certain Iris was finally overwhelmed by the sadness she couldn't stop feeling for victims whose stories she didn't want forgotten.

Because of her, they won't be.

Jeff Guinn, (817) 390-7720
jguinn@star-telegram.com

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/10172940.htm