Iris Chang, a best-selling Chinese American author was found dead at the age of 36. She had been discovered in her car along Highway 17 just south of Los Gatos with a gunshot wound to her head, Santa Clara County authorities said on Wednesday. Authorities believe the injury was self-inflicted. Chang had recently been treated in hospital after suffering from depression. Chang was renowned for her books about the Japanese occupation of China as well as the history of Chinese immigrants in the US, as the BBC News reported. "I'm just shocked," said retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lillian Sing, who was helping Chang with a documentary on aging U.S. military veterans who had suffered as POWs in Japanese captivity during World War II. "She was a real woman warrior trying to fight injustice." Stunned friends and colleagues sought to understand what might have led to the suicide of an energetic and passionate young woman who channeled her outrage over Japanese war atrocities into a busy career of writing and lecturing. Chang also wrote a history of China's missile program and chronicled the Chinese experience in America. Ignatius Ding, an activist who worked with Chang for several years in seeking to have Japan acknowledge and apology for atrocities it committed during World War II, said Chang's current project videotaping the former U.S. prisoners of war had been emotionally taxing for her. "She was doing research recently in Kentucky and ran into some problem," he said. "She got really upset, and she flew home." Chang lived in San Jose with her husband, Brett Douglas, informs San Francisco Chronicle. Met her once; nice enough, and solid historical storyteller, no doubt. Hope the (s)election didn't push her over the edge. Maybe it was just being in Kentucky. R.I.P. from whatever it was that tormented you so, Iris.
I Googled "Iris Chang Rape of Nanking" and was shocked to find out that the 3rd site listed was one compiling "scholarly" work by Japanese "historians" and "researchers" who supposedly find errors in Iris Chang's book. How does such a site occupy such a high position on the Google list?
News reports say clinical depression, as well as the disturbing nature of her research, played a part.
Author's death stuns friends, fans http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/the_valley/10162615.htm
I'm not trying to be an ass, but it's true, most of our culture's most celebrated artists died young. I'm certain that in the long run she will get more publicity for her premature death than she would have ever gotten for her actual writing.
Well now through her selfish act she will receive enough publicity ensuring that no one will make that mistake again.
I remember watching interviews of her at the release of "The Rape of Nanking." Brilliant and very pretty. What wasn't there to live for? Sad. RIP.
She had a serious ILLNESS. Can you guys show a little compassion? She had fame, fortune, beauty, prestige, EVERYTHING...except for her illness. This isn't the type of person looking for the easy way out. My God, she had everything to live for.
In the old country, the way you dealt with mental disease was by getting up the next morning and going to work in the fields for only 16 hours instead of 20. Now everybody's a candy SS prima donna who can't deal with "stress". Give me a fricking break, she had an easy life and threw it away, destroying not only her own life but that of her young son.