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The high-flying author who forced the world's attention on Japanese atrocities in China 70 years ago died young and tragically. Shelley Gare finds a life under renewed scrutiny
IRIS Chang never was able to find her pause button. At four, she wrote her first mystery story. By 23, the Chinese-American journalism student had landed a contract to write her first book, about a Chinese missile scientist deported by the US government during the paranoia of the Cold War 1950s.
Six years later, her second book, a truly harrowing account of a massacre that has been called the Chinese Holocaust, was published. The event had been virtually overlooked by the world at large for 60 years.
In The Rape of Nanking Chang investigates in gruesome detail the atrocities that began on December 13, 1937 when the Japanese army captured that city in the Sino-Japanese war preceding World War II. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Chinese -- the number is fiercely disputed, with some Japanese nationalists claiming 20,000 or less -- were horrifically murdered during a seven-week terror campaign. Thousands of others were tortured. At least 20,000, possibly 80,000, women were raped and many of them were murdered, too.
Chang's story is nightmarish in its descriptions, like a handbook from hell, but since 1997, it has sold half a million copies. Sales weren't harmed by the 29-year-old's beauty, boldness and eloquent outrage.
Her demands that Japan issue an official apology, pay reparations and properly educate future generations about Nanking, infuriated elements in the Japanese government and the extreme Right in Japan. The US State Department also fretted about her effect on diplomatic relations. In one memorable television encounter, she took on the Japanese ambassador.
Then, at 36 -- bang! -- Chang was gone.
On a November morning in 2004, a motorist found her slumped in her white Oldsmobile on the side of Highway 17, near her home in San Jose in northern California. There was an ivory-handled antique gun by her side. A bullet had gone through the roof of her mouth. Her teeth were broken, a coroner's report noted. Her clothes were bloodstained.
The coroner declared it suicide.
Commuters hearing the news on radio pulled into the side of the road in shock. Chang was famous,...