Some became overwrought with emotion during the interviews and broke down into tears. She came alive before crowds -- she loved to share, and she was interested in other people's lives. "When we first got married, we said we were going to start trying to have a child after four years," Brett said. They are the ones who brought her up." The first was John Rabe, a German member of the Nazi party who was living in the Chinese capital in 1937. Less than two months later, she did. And she believed her research produced irrevocable proof of Japanese atrocities. . "But this time, I had assumed she was sleeping all day after working all night. Her second book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997),[9] was published on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre and was motivated in part by her own grandparents' stories about their escape from the massacre. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004) was an American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. But there were untold numbers of women she could not save from capture, torture or death at the hands of Japanese soldiers. The lack of sleep can exacerbate the illness and vice versa. Brett said Iris was anxious to get back to work. ", The book rocketed Iris into the pantheon of American intellectuals. Just what had happened to Chang was a mystery. ", After studying the final results of the Santa Clara Country medical examiner's report, Baker closed his investigation March 1, 2005. She was 26. "I learned from my research that medicine is not one for all," said Chang. "It's baffling to me that the U.S. today has so little knowledge of the four months we held out," Martel told The Chronicle by telephone from his home in Wisconsin. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. ", Rabiner became worried, too. At the Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Los Altos Hills, the photograph stood on an easel before the chapel. ", Rabiner, who later became an agent and represented Iris, said, "The book was beyond well reviewed -- it was a mega-best-seller that continues to sell. When Martel read in a newspaper about her death, he asked his daughter, "Is that our Iris? Her long-distance engagement to Brett entered its second year. iris changs family She confirmed the danger of psychiatric drugs and antidepressants after reading publications by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, as well as bio-psychiatry researcher and psychiatrist, Martin Teicher. 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. Her obituary was published in newspapers worldwide. After the ambassador spoke of events in Nanking, Iris turned to the moderator and said: "I didn't hear an apology. [14], R.F. chris douglas owner/creator/artist at karnage clothing Canterbury, New Zealand Chris Douglas Area Sales Manager Wakefield Chris D. Loader operator at Agg. Chang had used her diary as a source, and Vautrins story figures prominently in her book. ", Iris called Rabiner. 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. Shed already spoken with Changs widower, Brett Douglas, and knew about the fertility treatments the couple had undergone in order to have their son, Christopher, who was born in 2002. At 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, a county water district employee drove past the Oldsmobile. "She ventured into a minefield of unexploded ordnance.". 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. But just in time, Iris changed the subject, prompting him to tell a lighter story. Stories about Chang's grandparents' harrowing escape were part of her family legacy and prompted her to embark on this ambitious project, for which she interviewed elderly survivors of the massacre and discovered thousands of rare documents in four different languages. People tend to think that clinical depression is like a bad-hair day. It's very hard to believe that there is something wrong with your mind," said Dr. David Lo, director of Santa Cruz Mental Health Services and former director of Chinatown Mental Health Center in San Francisco. "It is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her reaction. Ultimately, three notes were found, all dated Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. Christopher Douglas Retweeted. For Asian Americans to write nonfiction about Asia or Asian America was relatively new. She hadn't ever heard much of Ray Charles' music before, and when we got home, she went upstairs and was browsing all kinds of information on Ray Charles on the Internet.". Mo Hayder dedicated a novel to her. And Iris would buy lunch and dinner for everybody, and they all thought it was great. This bustling city of 6 million glimmers. Home Deep Cleaning . "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. This post was contributed by a community member. "We went to see 'Ray,' " Brett said. "Not only because she started thinking about writing The Rape of Nanking in Cupertino, but also because she gave speeches in Cupertino many times, this book signing event in Cupertino is significant to me.". 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. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. With few rations, little ammunition and no reinforcements, 70,000 American and Filipino troops held off the Japanese for months. For reviews of the book, visit irischang.net/news/index.php. So, in return for performing a short, Chaplinesque shuffle, he would be rewarded with a handful of scallions. CHANG2-C-29APR03-DD-HO.jpg Iris met the man she would marry in 1989, when she was a sophomore in journalism at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. "To see her on TV, defending 'Rape of Nanking' so fiercely and so fearlessly -- I just sat down, stopped, in awe," said Helen Zia, author of "Asian-American Dreams: Emergence of an American People" and co-author, with Wen-Ho Lee, of "My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused. Her friendship with Iris, Culliton said, "lasted from the day she walked in as a student -- in effect, to the day she died.". The Committee of 100 is a national non-partisan organization composed of American citizens of Chinese descent who have achieved positions of leadership in the United States in a broad range of professions. Kamen loved Chang, but she was determined not to "write a Hallmark card," either. It was later discovered that she had left behind three suicide notes each dated November 8, 2004. She bought Derek Humphrys book on suicide, Final Exit, and sent boxes of her papers to three different archivesat the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford, and the U. of I.leaving Kamen a mountain of carefully organized materials to go through. Throughout her life, Chang was instrumental in capturing Asian-American history. . Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography Finding Iris Chang,[1] and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. He was a happy baby, with his mother's jet-black hair. Iris Chang is best known for two things: writing the explosive bestseller "The Rape of Nanking," and then killing herself. A lot of people misunderstood her in that way. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking, ended her life with a pistol on November 9, 2004. [5] She then embarked on her career as an author and lectured and wrote magazine articles. As a guest speaker at colleges she often cited Changs career as an example of how to think big; she encouraged students to just decide what you want and go get itto the point of being naive. But while Chang was undeniably brilliant and hardworking, her undisguised ambition turned off as many people as it charmed. "Iris was impatient. The lead balls must be individually prepared, packed with gunpowder and topped with a percussive cap. She was easily hurt, though sometimes she didn't show it. She asked if Iris had any friends there she could call for help. "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. But Into the Numbers, by the Chinese-American playwright Christopher Chen, genuinely is. Event on 11/16/04 in San Jose. By now, Brett was living in Santa Barbara, working toward a doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of California. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the black-clad tribe of mourners formed a line. ", Between August and November, Iris saw two different therapists before finding one who seemed a good fit. Neither did they know she had been bent on suicide. "She didn't like other people taking control, so she resisted" his attending any of her therapy sessions. There is always free will. When you do not, you live not just by the day but by the minute. She wanted to be independent, to think for herself. "Michael is very outgoing, very extroverted -- Iris is different," said Mrs. Chang. She wrote her thesis on "The Poetry of Science." Box. ", Later, Iris challenged the Japanese ambassador to a debate on the "MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour" on PBS. [2] Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Works 3 Public notability 4 Depression . 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. "And she brought an incredible reserve of emotion to it. But as she began to manifest symptoms of bipolar illness, she perceived them as a failure of will. 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 was as if he were back in Bataan. "She was so driven," Brett said, "she just wouldn't take time off." In 1997, Iris Changs The Rape of Nanking was published to great critical acclaim and quickly became a national bestseller. "These people wanted their story told for a long, long time, and they knew that because Iris had success as an author, she'd be able to do a very good job," Brett said. Another said: "Let us thank her parents. Douglas, who is raising the couple's five-year-old son, Christopher, told Cheng the same thing he'd told every filmmaker who approached him for his late wife's story - to go through her things at the institute where she worked, talk to the people she'd interviewed, then get back to him if still interested. Rabiner recalled telling Iris, " 'You're young, but take a flyer.' Iris learned to read at age 4. Iris Chang. "He could tell that she was a lot different after she came back from Louisville. She finally agreed that she would talk to me. On a cloudy Monday morning in early November, author Iris Chang, 36, drove her white 1999 Oldsmobile Alero down Alum Rock Avenue toward the green foothills of East San Jose. "She would just say, matter-of-factly, 'Japan is lying and here's why.' Chasing the shadows. At the time of her death, she had been taking the medications Depakote and Risperdal to stabilize her mood.[19]. "He reminded me to eat and to take a walk when I was writing all day, forgetting everything else.". "We set out a very big lunch -- meat trays and sandwiches and desserts," she said. "She was like a battalion commander," Meldahl said. ", Baker explained his conclusion: "There's no evidence that any kind of conspiracy caused her death. Smith said the colonel spent only a short time with her. But Rabiner had been looking for someone conversant in the sciences and in Mandarin to write a biography of Hsue-Shen Tsien. ", Her father patted the tabletop. "The boys came together to say, 'Crisis! And often, he added, "people think they've wronged everybody and can't possibly do anything to make up for what they think they've done wrong. Doctors at Norton Hospital had diagnosed "brief reactive psychosis," her father said. The cycle of mood shifts that distinguish the disease -- from manic highs to depressive lows -- differs with every sufferer. [16][17], Chang suffered a nervous breakdown in August 2004, which her family, friends, and doctors attributed in part to constant sleep deprivation, dozens of herbal supplements,[18] and heavy doses of psychologically damaging prescription medication. Iris Chang lived and worked in California. ", The book's popularity meant a lengthy book tour. Newsweek ran an excerpt, and soon Iris was a familiar face on TV news shows. I thought it would break the spell, break the hold of these emotions. "Iris is sensitive, but she got charged up," he recalled. Some 8,000 died on the notorious "death march." I will follow the doctor's orders for medications. Iris Shun-Ru Chang was born on March 28, 1968, in Princeton, N.J. 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