Death of a hero - Iris Chang
2 years, 9 months By Allyson
I kind of feel like an idiot, and like I really should have known this. Somehow I missed the stories in the media, and the internet entirely. A lot of you may not be aware of who she is. But she was a person that really altered my view on things.
Her name is - was Irish Chang. She was the author of the book The Rape of Nanking. She worked diligently to publicize the atrocities that the Japanese did to the Chinese in the late 1930s at the very beginning of World War II. I first read this book in 1999, two years after its publication. I managed to finish the book in about 3 days. It probably would have been sooner except that the images she told of were so graphic I often found myself in tears and needing to put the book down to rest emotionally.
I look at Iris Chang as a hero because she had a purpose. The Japanese government denied that they had mercilessly slaughtered and raped so many hundreds of thousands of people in Nanking. (The numbers reported are varied because no one kept track. But at the very least it is estimated that 250 thousand were killed and 80 thousand were raped in the timespan of about 7 weeks. Other number estimates are much higher. But that is the bare minimum I've seen reported.) And she brought these atrocities to light so that people would know it happened. So people would know it wasn't just a fabricated story by the Chinese. But that others non-Chinese also documented what went on 70 years ago.
The amazing thing about all this is she wasn't just successful at getting the knowledge of this out, but that she accomplished this great feat at the age of 28.
What I didn't know about Irish Chang until today is that she died in November of 2006. Apparently, she suffered from bipolar syndrome, and one of the issues was that she refused to take her medication as directed. Because of this, it seems, she decided to commit suicide. Somehow you'd think i would have heard about this considering it was supposedly all over the news. But I still managed to miss it. She left behind her parents, her husband, and her then 2 year old son.
Rest in Peace, Iris Chang.
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