Woman Who Could Not Forget (3 page)

Shau-Jin drove up and down the rows of cars in the parking lots of several nearby hotels and places she liked to shop, as I scanned all the cars and license plate numbers. I was in a different world, oblivious to all the people around me. I concentrated only on scanning the parked cars and their license plates. But Iris’s car was not there.

My heart was still pulsating with anxiety, and my hope faded as twilight turned into darkness. Under the dim yellow lights in the parking lot of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, we circled the lot one more time. Finally, we gave up and drove home.

I felt as if I were on the edge of a cliff, about to fall down into a deep valley below. I became even more frightened as I peered out the windows of our townhouse into the night sky. If she had driven to a strange place, she could had been robbed or even killed by someone in the street because she was so mentally vulnerable. It had been eighteen hours since she’d printed out the note, and no one could tell us where she was.

At about 8
P.M
., I called Iris’s most recent psychiatrist and told him that Iris had disappeared and left a suicide note. He asked me to read the note to him.

Previously, the psychiatrist had always thought I was a neurotic mother and too protective of Iris. He hadn’t believed Iris was suicidal until we informed him that Iris was browsing suicide Web sites. But Iris never disclosed her innermost feelings to him.

I once asked Iris what she talked about during her therapy sessions. She said she and the psychiatrist spent a lot of time talking about the philosophy of life. It seemed too abstract to me. I worried that she wasn’t getting the help she needed.

Now the psychiatrist was telling us that Brett, Shau-Jin, and I should go to the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the most popular places in the world to commit suicide, because Iris had mentioned “drowning in an open sea” in her suicide note. Hearing his words, I felt my spine dripping with cold sweat. He urged us to drive to the bridge and check out the parking lots. But Shau-Jin and I were already exhausted physically and emotionally after a day of fruitless searching. We did not have the energy to drive to San Francisco.

But I was able to find the phone number of the Golden Gate Bridge Patrol. I gave an officer Iris’s car license plate number and description of what she looked like. For the next few hours, I was in constant contact with the officer. He was patient and kind.

Eventually, however, he told us that no one who looked like Iris was near the bridge, and her car wasn’t there either.

A creepy thought engulfed me: if Iris had driven her car over a cliff and plunged into the ocean, we might
never
find her.

I also thought about how she had talked in recent weeks about “escaping.” What if she had driven to some remote place and planned to hide there indefinitely? “O, Iris, please come home,” I shouted to myself in desperation.

I can’t recall when I fell asleep that night. I just remember the frightening sound of a ringing telephone piercing the quiet darkness. It was Brett. He said he was coming to our home with a police officer. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was nearly midnight.

We opened the door. Brett and a plainclothes officer came in. Both looked solemn.

“I’m sorry to inform you that Iris is dead,” the officer said. “She shot herself early this morning and her body was found in her car, near Los Gatos.”

I felt as if I’d been caught in a violent storm. The thunder was deafening. The lightning blinded me. The earth seemed to shake.

Shau-Jin and I collapsed onto the carpet of our living room, and I found myself falling into an endless black tunnel. I heard my voice echoing:

“Iris, Iris, how could you kill yourself? How could you desert Christopher, me, and your father?

“How could you do such a thing to me?

“How can I live the rest of my life without you?”

But I would have to. All I have now are decades of memories—some haunting, but most filled with love.

Iris Chang was the author of a 1998
New York Times
best seller, and when she died she was only thirty-six years old.

Her bestselling book,
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
, published in 1997, on the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre, examines one of the most tragic chapters of World War II: the slaughter, gang rape, and torture of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in the former capital of China. The book made a huge impact on the global redress movement regarding the Imperial Japanese war crimes in Asia during World War II.

Her death shocked the world. No one believed a best-selling author, a young, beautiful rising star like Iris Chang, would kill herself. Her death was headline news in almost all the major newspapers throughout the world. The news was also immediately broadcast over radio and TV stations. The shockwave hit Chinese Diaspora communities hard, all over the globe.

On November 19, 2004, six hundred people showed up on short notice to her funeral in Los Altos, California. The chapel at Gate of Haven cemetery was too small for such a huge number of people; mourners overflowed onto the lawn outside the chapel. Many of them were Iris’s friends and supporters, but most were strangers and admirers. Letters, telegrams, and flowers of condolence poured in from all corners of the world.

During the funeral, James Bradley, the best-selling author of
Flags of Our Father
and
Flyboys,
addressed his eulogy to Iris’s two years old son. He said, in part (the complete text of the Eulogy is located in the
Appendix
),

Christopher, your mother was Iris Chang. . . . Five years before you were born, I was struggling in my effort to write a book about the six flag-raisers in the photo.

For two years I had tried to find a publisher. Twenty-seven publishers wrote me rejection letters. . . .

Flags of Our Father became a
New York Times
#1 best seller. Twenty-seven publishers had said ‘No.’ Your mother had said ‘Do it. . . .’

(She) touched millions and will be remembered on all continents in countless ways. Here is just one of them. . . .

And later—when you make that difficult but rewarding inner journey to discover your unique mission in the universe—when you find your personal truth—I hope you will acknowledge the example of your valiant mother who once fearlessly told truth to the world.

Perhaps you will write an acknowledgement to her, a thank-you like I once did.

A thank-you that begins with two bright and hopeful words.

Those two beautiful words: Iris Chang.

Michael Honda, of the California House of Representatives, made a tribute to Iris in the form of the Congressional Record in the 108th Congress. He stated that “Iris will be remembered for her work and service to the community. . . . Our community has lost a role model and close friend; the world has lost one of its finest and most passionate advocates of social and historical justice.”

In Iris’s obituary in the
New York Times
, Iris’s agent, Susan Rabiner, said “
The Rape of Nanking
spent ten weeks on the
New York Times
‘Best Seller’ list, and close to half a million copies have been sold,” and “The book drew wide international attention.”

In the
Los Angeles Times
, the obituary read, “The late historian Stephen Ambrose said Chang was ‘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.’”

George Will, the
Washington Post
columnist, praised Iris in his 1998 article, saying “Something beautiful, an act of justice, is occurring in America today. . . . Because of Chang’s book, the second rape of Nanking is ending.” And reporter Richard Rongstad eulogized her with these words: “Iris Chang lit a flame and passed it to others and we should not allow that flame to be extinguished.”

Of course, most of the descriptions of Iris were of her public persona.

Her book, since its publication seven years before, had created a firestorm in Japan. Right-wing groups in Japan had attacked her book in an attempt to cover up and whitewash their stained history.

Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding her death, there has been much speculation in the media. Many of these conjectures were wide of the mark, because Iris had always been a very private person. Most people only knew the Iris they saw on TV and in the papers, but not her true self.

Who was Iris Chang? What was her family background, her cultural heritage? How did she decide to become a writer, what motivated her to write the book
The Rape of Nanking
, what was her ambition, her American Dream, the reason for her suicide and whether her death could have been prevented? These are some of the questions I try to answer in this book.

The main purpose of this book is to give the world a full and accurate picture of Iris’s life and the environment in which she grew up. The readers will learn how this young author was able to accomplish her life’s goal of fighting for historical truth and social justice. Iris was a woman who could not forget the sufferings of those who had perished as a result of wartime atrocities. She was single-handedly and unflinchingly fighting for justice for those who had been otherwise forgotton by history. The reader will also learn—for the first time—the tragic circumstances surrounding the last few months of her life.

There has been much speculation and a spate of rumors in the media about Iris’s mental condition. Without the authors knowing anything of her private life, most of the news on the Internet and even a book that was published about her mental state were purely speculations. Only family members knew what actually happened to Iris in those final days. The rumors about Iris’s mental state are an injustice to her. I could not let the true story of her life be left untold.

This book will dispel many of these myths and will present Iris Chang—her trials and tribulations, her successes and failures, her love and joys, her sadness and pain—in short, Iris Chang as only we, her family, knew her. This biographical memoir is something that I had to do for Iris. And it’s something I think Iris would have wanted me to do.