Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Otherwise, I’m still a little weak though I seem to be suffering from allergies rather than a cold . . . every foreigner I meet and virtually every Chinese I talk to has the same problem—we suspect it’s the air pollution and pollen and dust and bad air conditioning. Will be in touch soon . . . all is going well.

  Love, Iris

  Then on September 2, four days before she returned home, she wrote us again:

  Dear Dad and Mom:

  I have some good news and bad news—the good being that there was no major typhoon after all, only a slight drizzle, the bad being that all the former Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese army at Nanking in 1937-1938 are dead. My contacts at the local military association here made a series of frantic phone calls trying to find one surviving soldier; no luck. Turns out the two Taiwanese soldiers I planned to interview weren’t at Nanking at all but in nearby Shanghai or were at Nanking years after the Massacre.

  Coincidentally, the Center of Academic Activities is hosting a conference on the history of World War II (Sept. 1-3) and I’ve met some very interesting people so far . . . two are Chinese experts on the Rape of Nanking (one is Wu Tienwei, the SIU professor who gave me a good letter of recommendation for the Pacific Cultural Foundation grant). My health seems to have recovered and I look forward to going home . . . will put details of my trip in a long letter to you later.

  The former soldiers are still looking for people who might have served in the Japanese army in Nanjing in 1937 but I’m not holding my breath . . . if they locate one person, I will try to correspond with him. So far, I’ve interviewed more than 10 survivors of the massacre.

  Love, Iris

  After returning home on September 15, Iris was apparently fully recovered and wrote us a long letter to update us about her Tsien book and her concerns over her safety in writing her next book on the Nanking Massacre:

  Dear Mom,

  . . . Susan Rabiner and I talked yesterday and she told me that Walter McDougall, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the book The Heavens and The Earth wrote me a blurb for the book jacket in time for publication—I now have three great blurbs (the other two are from Arnold Kramish, the author of World War II books and books on espionage and a former physicist for the Manhattan Project, and John Bluth, the official historian for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.) Also, she alerted me to the fact that Publishers Weekly ran a picture of the cover of the book with my name on it (p. 40, September 4th issue)—it’s a beautiful cover, with a silhouette of a rocket over a dragon embroidered piece of red silk.

  . . .

  Now for the bad news. I’m somewhat concerned about the future of Basic Books/HarperCollins as a scholarly book publishing firm. When I was in China, there was a major shakeup at Basic and a lot of editors got fired. Susan, fortunately, was not only kept on but promoted, so she’s busier than ever. The new Basic Books is a much more commercial imprint, although it still claims to put out serious books. Apparently, any editor or author at Basic who isn’t bringing money into the company will be on his or her way out. Susan said that I should survive because I tend to pick subjects that are not only literary but commercial—and it is hard to find an author who is both literary and commercial, she said. . . .

  I think Dad and Robert Reid were right when they urged me to write as many books as possible before going to grad school (if I ever go), because the printing presses might not be open to me forever. More so than ever before, publishing is turning into a “winner takes all” market. The September 18th Newsweek declares that the “$1 million-advance syndrome is the latest example of an industry gone slightly bananas trying to satisfy the chain super-stores that want blockbusters and the entertainment conglomerates that dream of synergy between books, movies and television. There’s no longer time to groom an author through three or four novels, hoping that eventually he’ll find an audience. Today’s publishers are scrambling to strike it rich by signing up the next Bridges of Madison County. The article describes how Nicholas Evans, a 45-year-old unknown British screenwriter, sold his first novel, The Horse Whisperer for $6.15 million ($3.15 million for the book, $3 million for the film rights)—before his novel was even finished!

  The only thing preventing me from completely self-destructing when I hear such news is a flicker of hope that the Nicholas Evans of the next millennium will be ME!

  Love, Iris

  The second e-mail came right after the one above:

  Dear Mom,

  I forgot to mention that Brett and I will be moving to a two-bedroom apartment when we find the time. We’re moving because we need the space and also because I want our new home to be untraceable by some Japanese fanatic. Several people in the US expressed concern for my physical safety. (Most of my friends feel that I will be in far less danger when the book is published, because then the “secret” of the Nanking Massacre will be out.) I don’t know if they are paranoid, but I do know that the PRC government will not permit their scholars to write on the Nanjing massacre, for fear of jeopardizing their lives should some right-wing extremists find them.

  Today I talked with some private detectives on the phone to find out how one might hide from the public eye. These detectives have helped local celebrities and battered girl friends “disappear.” It’s amazing what people can find out about you if they have only your name and phone number. . . . One detective used my name and phone number to find out my social security number and all my addresses for the past five years. . . . They gave me a lot of advice over the phone. . . .

  The basic principle of maintaining a low profile is this: fill in a PO Box address on all forms and correspondence; avoid giving out my actual address whenever possible. HarperCollins and my new literary agent should have only my PO Box and phone number unless they decide to come and visit me. . . .

  Brett is annoyed by all this because he doesn’t think anyone is going to come after me. . . . Brett’s mom, who had earlier urged me to cancel my trip to China, now wonders whether I should write the Nanjing book at all.

  Meanwhile, I remain intrigued by what the detectives and FBI told me over the phone: did you know that individual sheets of paper can sometimes be traced back to the state or company from which they came, and that the saliva on a postage stamp can be traced with DNA analysis?

  Love, Iris

  In respond to Iris’s long e-mails, I reminded her in my reply that she, as a responsible writer, should represent truth, beauty, and humanity. As for potential dangers posted by Japanese fanatics, I said that she should follow detectives’ suggestions and to protect herself properly. However, I did not feel that there was any need for her to panic or be paranoid.

  While we were in Copenhagen we could get American news by watching the CNN English-language news channel. Around the end of September, the hottest news was the trial of O. J. Simpson. On October 2, the day before the verdict, I received an e-mail from Iris, who wrote that she was sure that the jury would find him guilty. Then, on October 3, the court announced that O. J. was not guilty. Iris wrote us immediately:

  Dear Dad,

  I’m devastated . . . the jury found OJ not guilty. How could they?

  Mom probably told you about my euphoric email yesterday when I was absolutely convinced that the jury [had] found Simpson guilty. . . .

  News reports say that Simpson made more money in prison this year than he did as a free man the year before . . . defense analysts were stunned: one said people had been convicted and executed on far less evidence than in this case. . . .

  How could they? How could they?

  Iris

  And another e-mail, written right after the one above:

  Dear Dad,

  . . . Perhaps I was naive when I assumed that OJ would be convicted. Apparently the politics of race have become so polarized in this country that the central issue of murder can be ignored.

  I felt physically ill when the verdict was announced. How much more evidence did the jury need? . . .

&nbs
p; One can always say that evidence has been fabricated but after a point it becomes ridiculous. The defense team’s tactics remind me of those of the hard-core Japanese who still deny that the Rape of Nanking ever happened. Even after being presented with a mountain of photographs and documents and witness testimony some Japanese still believe the massacre is a pack of lies made up by the Chinese. Photos can be altered, they say, documents forged. Witnesses can be bribed. What about Western newsreel footage and their newspaper articles? Nothing but propaganda and sensationalism. Even primary source material like burial records in the Chinese archives and US intercepts of the Japanese Foreign Office communication can be dismissed if one believes there is some grand conspiracy between the US and China to frame Japan. Some Japanese historians then try to confuse everyone with semantics and metaphysical arguments: what IS truth, anyway? Isn’t it all relative, depending on your viewpoint? Maybe there is no such thing as truth anyway. And how can you really trust what you see as reality, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Some even hint that one can never write about the Rape of Nanjing because it was such a brutal large-scale event and no one can ascertain the exact number of casualties. Does it mean that no historian can ever write about the US civil war or World War II or any war, because of the impossibility of an exact body count? What nonsense!!

  Love, Iris

  We returned home from Copenhagen in time for Thanksgiving. Both Iris and Michael came home for Thanksgiving too. Iris and Brett came home also to attend Brett’s brother’s wedding in Indiana. For Iris, there was another important event to attend, her book signing for her newly published book Thread of the Silkworm at the Champaign Pages for All Ages bookstore. The morning of November 22, 1995, Iris was interviewed by Jack Brighton of WILL-AM Radio. At 7 P.M., when Shau-Jin and I went with Iris to the bookstore to attend the signing, we met many of our old friends, Iris’s high-school classmates, college friends, her teachers, professors, and so forth. Indeed, it was a big homecoming party!

  For Iris, her first book was her first “child.” To me, it felt like my first “grandchild” when I held that copy on November 22, 1995! It took Iris, as well as us, numerous hours, days, and months in discussions about the book, from application grants to support her research to making a trip to China, from translating Chinese articles about Dr. Tsien to rescuing her from being trapped inside the National Archives. Shau-Jin and I were always her cheerleaders. It was a journey for her, and also quite an incredible journey for us!

  The Biological Clock

  After the book signing and Thanksgiving were over, Iris and Brett went back to Santa Barbara on November 26, 1995. As for us, we departed for Mexico for the rest of Shau-Jin’s sabbatical. One of Shau-Jin’s students, now a professor at the Institute of Physics in Merida, picked us up at the airport and drove us to a nice apartment where we would stay for three weeks. During our stay, Shau-Jin gave a series of physics lectures to the students at the Institute there, while I was earnestly reading Iris’s book. Although Iris had told us about Dr. Tsien’s life all along with her progress of the writing of the book and even though we had translated some of the Chinese articles and letters for her, we did not actually see her manuscript of the book before its publication. While I read the book, I also tried to keep a sheet recording any errors I spotted, so Iris could ask the publisher to correct them in the next printing.

  By the time we returned home on December 17, I had finished reading Iris’s book and was ready to give her my comments. No question, I was very impressed by the book, but not just because my daughter was the author. It was fair to say Thread of the Silkworm was a well-written and thoroughly researched book. We had received many compliments about the book from other people, including our professor friends in aeronautic engineering and physics who were not afraid to “tell it like it was” and would not easily praise a book. They were really impressed by Iris who, though not trained as an engineer, could understand and write so accurately about aeronautical and rocket sciences. The book had taken Iris a total of more than three years to research and write. Iris said Susan Rabiner praised her for it, as well as a number of her friends. We had always known Iris was a talented writer, but the publication of this book proved it to the outside world.

  On Sunday morning, January 21, 1996, Iris called us from Santa Barbara and exclaimed that John Taylor in Washington had just called her to say that there was a review of her book on the front page of the Washington Post Book World! She was so excited, it seemed like she could hardly breathe. She asked us to buy several copies of that Sunday’s Washington Post and save the copies for her, because she had called around her town and found that the Post would not arrive in stores there until Wednesday! Shau-Jin and I immediately drove to the Barnes and Noble and bought as many copies of the newspaper as they had. Right there, we read the review, which was straightforward and positive and contained no criticism of her. It was a big relief, and we were very happy and impressed. We imagined that it was not easy to get a book reviewed in a big newspaper, let alone to be reviewed by a major national newspaper such as the Washington Post.

  Pretty soon after that, many other major newspapers and magazines reviewed Iris’s book. On March 5, the Chicago Tribune ran a review, and on March 14, Nature reviewed it favorably as well. Not long after that, Science magazine also reviewed Thread of the Silkworm. In the Science book review, there was a photo of Dr. Tsien in front of a chalkboard, which was displayed conspicuously. Nature and Science are considered two of the most important scientific magazines in the world, with wide circulations in the U.S., and Iris told us she felt honored that her book could be reviewed in such prestigious magazines.

  One of the reasons her book generated such wide interest and media coverage at the time was also due to the tension between the People’s Republic of China on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan. A general democratic presidential election was going to take place on March 23 in Taiwan. The PRC was worried that presidential candidate Li Teng-hui would advocate an independent Taiwan. The PRC carried out a cross-strait military exercise and missile test on March 8 to show their military power by launching M-9 missiles into the water of the Taiwan Strait. The PRC considered Taiwan to be part of China and had warned Taiwan for a long time that they would use military power to stop any possible action leading to Taiwanese independence.

  We read both Chinese and English news reports, so we were well aware of the tension between mainland China and Taiwan. I called Iris and reminded her that she should point out in media interviews for her book that the missiles used in the cross-strait military maneuver had been developed and advanced by Dr. Tsien, the father of the Chinese missile program. Very soon, Iris was interviewed by a number of radio stations on the East Coast about her book, and on March 14 she was invited by NPR’s All Things Considered program to their station studio in Thousand Oaks for a personal interview. All these activities were related to the tension on the Taiwan Strait. On March 23, the South China Morning Post, the largest English newspaper in southern China, had an article on Iris’s book, with a huge photo of Dr. Tsien wearing a military uniform and the missiles he helped develop prominently displayed at the top of the article. Certainly, this was incredible publicity for her book and helped establish Iris even further in the literary community.

  In February, Iris told us that she had book signings in local bookstores in Santa Barbara; and in March, she was interviewed at Santa Barbara’s Celebrity Author’s luncheon. And the local newspaper profiled her and her book. People found that she was a good public speaker and could handle interviews very well. Indeed, she became a local celebrity.

  Iris was somewhat disappointed, however, when Basic Books told her that the sale of her book was not so great, about average, although the book got great reviews in important newspapers and magazines. On March 11, 1996, Iris wrote to her dad:

  Dear Dad:

  Today I was interviewed by a major New York radio station (WOR) on a syndicated talk show program with only three hours adva
nce notice. . . . The WOR station received a fax I had sent them last night and made a snap decision to book me on the show. It’s easier for me to get on the air now that tensions are rising in the Taiwan Straits.

  Susan said that while my book is attracting more review attention (and favorable review attention) than the average book at Basic, it is generating average (or below average) sales. In other words, the book is noticed and well-respected by the reviewer but people who read the reviews aren’t buying SILKWORM in droves. In contrast, Basic has some books that sell tens of thousands of copies within months while getting virtually no reviews. But Susan said good reviews are important in establishing an author’s reputation. . . .

  Love, Iris

  She also complained to us that Basic Books had broken the promise that they would put her on a six-city book tour to promote the book. Iris said she would remember this when she was shopping for her next book contract.

  With all this publicity, Iris had great confidence in herself as an “author”: she had had a book published, and there was another one on the way. In the conversations we had over numerous telephone calls to each other during that period of time, she disclosed her ambition that she wanted to be a famous author; a world-class, best-selling book author. She had been reading many famous well-written books and studied their writing styles carefully, the way priests scrutinized the Bible. She said “I do not go to church; I go to the library. I worship books.” “Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality,” she would say. She wanted to be remembered after her death.

  She also recalled the years when she was in grade school and high school. “I was a loner in grade school and in high school. I do not mind. I found eternal happiness when I was reading a book.” She remembered how happy she was when she found a book she wanted in a library’s card catalog. She said, “I would scrawl down the call number of the book from the card catalog and run through the aisles. My heart was pounding, and I was so excited that I hardly could breathe and it seemed like I might faint.”