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Iris Chang.Qxd sarily see myself being locked into genre or subject for the rest A Thoroughly American History of my life. In fact, I might want to write some fiction in the A Talk With Historian Iris Chang future. By Terry Hong TBR: What prompted you to write The Rape of Nanking? IC: I had always wanted to learn more about the Nanking hile Iris Chang was writing her international best-seller, massacre. My parents had told me about it when I was a The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World child, but I could never find any English-language informa- War II, her hair started falling out. Small wonder, as she W tion about the tragedy in our local library. Then in 1994, I spent the majority of her waking hours researching and saw some photos of the “Rape of Nanking” at an exhibit recording one of the most atrocious periods in human history: sponsored by a human rights organization [now the Global the Japanese Imperial Army’s slaughter, rape, and torture of Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia] more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers in in Cupertino, California. The images of the Nanking atroci- December 1937. ties were worse than I could have ever imagined them to be, Published on the 60th anniversary of and I was determined to get to the bot- the massacre, the book—her second— tom of this story. I began researching put Chang on magazine covers, newspa- The Chinese in America the subject in earnest by early 1995, per headlines, radio talk shows, and A Narrative History and The Rape of Nanking was published television spots. That success gave her IRIS CHANG in 1997. the opportunity to meet Asian Viking, $29.95 cloth, ISBN 0-670-03123-2 Americans across the country, to share TBR: How did you go about doing the their experiences and hear their stories. Together with her research? own family’s immigrant memories, these testimonials gave the IC: Though I didn’t know it at the time, there was a Princeton, New Jersey-born Chang her next book project. tremendous amount of primary source information just wait- Compared with Nanking, Chang says, writing The Chinese in ing to be discovered. I went to the city of Nanking—now America: A Narrative History “was like a vacation.” Published called Nanjing—and filmed survivor testimonials. I also earlier this year, the book carefully traces the two-century located old film footage of the massacre taken by American evolution of an American people through the interwoven his- missionaries. At the National Archives, Yale Divinity School tory of China and the United States. Chang relies on written library, and other repositories I found oral histories, letters, memoirs, recorded oral histories, countless interviews, and and diaries of Western eyewitnesses who recorded the horror pieces of her own family’s narratives to create a thoroughly of Nanking as it unfolded before them. One thing that distin- American history. She offers a thought-provoking overview of guished Nanking from most other Chinese cities was the pres- the integral role the Chinese have played in American his- ence of foreigners in its population. Being the capital of China tory—proving that America as we know it could not possibly at the time, Nanking was a cosmopolitan and international exist without the contributions of Americans of Chinese city, attracting diplomats, scholars, and businessmen from descent. countries all across the globe. “There is nothing inherently alien about the Chinese I also rummaged through naval intelligence files and American experience,” Chang writes in her book. “In the end, State Department records, and documents from other U.S. the Chinese shared the same problems as all other immi- government agencies. One rich resource of U.S. records was grants—universal problems that recognized no borders.” Her the Japanese Foreign Office intercepts—the messages sent message is clear: People who look like her (and me), who have between the Japanese government Asian ancestry, are indeed true Americans. Throughout and their officials in Washington, history there which, unbeknownst to the The Bloomsbury Review: How did you become interested in are plenty Japanese, were systematically inter- writing about history? cepted, decoded, and translated by Iris Chang: After graduating from college, I worked for a of examples American intelligence. I unearthed short time as a reporter for the Associated Press and then the of Chinese thousands of original records in four Chicago Tribune, but ultimately decided to pursue a literary different languages—Japanese, career. I applied to the graduate writing program at Johns Americans who Chinese, English, and German. Hopkins University, where I took classes in fiction, narrative were politically Some of the descendants of the sur- nonfiction, playwriting, and poetry. At Hopkins, I came across active, who spoke vivors had information to share an intriguing topic that eventually evolved into my first book from their own private collections. I [Thread of the Silkworm, about Tsien Hsue-shen, a Chinese out, who refused to wouldn’t be surprised if there are American scientist who engineered the U.S. space program jump through still some primary source records and was falsely accused of communist leanings and deported to lurking about. There may still be China]. hoops created by more papers hidden away in the My last three books are works of history, but I don’t neces- the system. homes of the descendants of sur- Reprinted from The Bloomsbury Review®, Vol. 23, #5. © 2003, Terry Hong. All rights reserved. May not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted in any fashion without the written consent of Terry Hong; [email protected]. vivors and eyewitnesses in both Asia and Europe. and from different provinces in China, as well as I also found newspaper accounts of the massacre and the American-born Chinese who span many different genera- transcripts of the International Military Tribunal of the Far tions. Here you will see every extreme of racial acceptance East, held after the war. These records are very extensive and and persecution. For instance, I was fortunate to grow up in can be found in many major libraries in the United States. a multicultural and ethnically diverse university town, With all this information, I faced the challenge that every which overall was an idealistic and racially tolerant commu- author faces: how to organize one’s research into a coherent nity. But judging from my interviews with other Chinese narrative. I created a computer database so I could easily search Americans, many still face racial discrimination, negative for and retrieve facts. I’m still adding Nanking-related records stereotyping, and hate crimes. And as my research pro- to that database, and am still using it. Given the amount of gressed, I became aware of how timely my topic was, espe- attention this book has received, and the intensity of the denial cially after the Wen Ho Lee backlash [in 2000, another that still exists in Japan, I may one day write a sequel to Chinese American scientist was falsely accused of espi- Nanking. onage]. TBR: How did you survive the process of actually writing the TBR: Your book debuted about the same time as the Bill book with all its horrific details? Moyers documentary “Becoming American: The Chinese IC: I told myself that whatever pain I experienced writing Experience.” What are some of the differences between the two the book was nothing compared to what the victims had works? endured. Who am I to shy away from this topic and to com- IC: I think the main difference is that the Moyers docu- plain about pain, when hundreds of thousands of people died mentary tracks the history of Chinese Americans as a linear the most horrible deaths imaginable, people whose voices process, from the poor and downtrodden to the model minor- might be lost, forever, to oblivion? ity. My book presents a cyclical pattern—of wild swings But I do admit that the experience was disturbing—in fact, between acceptance and abuse. I want people to realize that devastating. I might be taking a walk or taking a shower and history repeats itself. one of the photographic images from the massacre might pop It is unfortunate that the documentary did not bring up up before my eyes. Those images are seared in my brain forever. dangerous decisions made by the U.S. government in the Once you see images of atrocities, you can’t ever unsee them. late 1990s, so when people watch the film they are left with Perhaps over time they might dull somewhat, but they will the impression that there are no troubles left for the Chinese never disappear. American community. I also remember a scene from the TBR: And what about writing The Chinese in America? documentary that showed a family proudly displaying all the IC: Writing it was like a vacation. I was able to recover from academic awards and trophies won by their American-born the wounds of writing Nanking. I didn’t want to follow Nanking children, eager to show off these awards to their friends and with another story like it—or even worse stories of Japanese relatives. Those kinds of images foster the popular stereo- atrocities, like the comfort women [enforced prostitutes to the type of Chinese Americans as model minorities, the safe, Japanese army]. Psychologically, I just couldn’t do it—I needed cozy image of a people reduced to teachers’ pets, striving for a pocket of something that was not so emotionally devastating. trinkets dangled in front of them. Throughout history there are plenty of examples of TBR: So how did you find your so-called vacation spot? Chinese Americans who were politically active, who spoke IC: [Laughs] I went on a huge book tour when Nanking out, who refused to jump through hoops created by the sys- came out.
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