Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  We recognized how important and valuable the diary of John Rabe was, as well as the reports and documentations about him. Rabe’s diary was one of the most powerful testimonies that could refute the Japanese rightwing politicians’ denial of the Rape of Nanking. Iris and I had many discussions on how and what to do with the diary. Iris’s book would be out in November 1997, but that was still a year and half away. We all agreed that the announcement of the discovery of Rabe’s diary and his story should coincide with the publication of her book as closely as possible. However, my instinct told me that we might not be able to hold the news that long. It was always a worry that the discovery would be leaked out. I was very much on the cautious side, and worried for Iris.

  Iris brought back from libraries and archives a tremendous amount of material on the Rape of Nanking. One time Iris commented to us that when she was writing Thread of the Silkworm, she wished she had more information on Dr. Tsien; whereas for The Rape of Nanking, she felt like she was overwhelmed by the amount of material. Too much information was just as problematic as too little, she said. She had American missionaries’ letters and diaries, American intelligence reports during the war, IMTFE records, Chinese eyewitness testimonials, Japanese soldiers’ confessions, and so forth. In addition, she had documentation and books on the subject in Chinese, Japanese, and German. She also had personal recordings of her own interviews with survivors in Nanjing.

  During this period, Iris worked at night so she could concentrate on writing without interruption. Brett was working during the day, from nine to five, whereas Iris would get up around noon and run errands in the afternoon before sitting down to work until Brett came home. After dinner, she would take a long walk with Brett, and then she would go write when Brett went to bed. It was a lonely schedule. Sometimes she would write until four or five in the morning and call us before she went to bed. Because Illinois time was two hours ahead of California time, when she called at 5 A.M. her time, we were already up. Sometimes she called us when we were about to go to bed at midnight, while she was at the peak of her writing.

  We always welcomed her calls and listened to her, no matter what the hour. That was also why she would pour upon us many of the inner emotions that she couldn’t find time to tell Brett. Besides, Brett was very busy with his own work, and Iris said that he was also getting worn out by all the gruesome stories of atrocities she described to him, one after another. There was a cultural difference, too; Iris found that we could understand her emotional anguish more because we had common Chinese roots and the tragedy hit closer to home.

  Iris told us that the most difficult thing was to read one case after another of the atrocities Japanese soldiers had committed in Nanking in 1937-1938. The Japanese soldiers carried out the rapes, tortures, and executions of innocent women and men with unspeakable cruelty. She read hundreds of such cases. She felt numb after a while. She told me she sometimes had to get up and away from the documents to take a deep breath. She felt suffocated and in pain.

  One day in March 1996, she read a document that described a nine-year-old weeping girl being dragged screaming into bedrooms to be raped by Japanese soldiers. She felt a cold rage sweep through her. She could hardly contain her anger.

  One night in April, she called and told me that she could not fall asleep lately. She had nightmares and had lost weight. Her hair fell out in clumps in the shower. I was alarmed and very worried when I heard that. As her mother, Iris’s health was my prime concern. I asked her whether she really wanted to continue to write this book. She said “Yes, Mom. What I’m suffering right now is nothing compared to those victims who perished in the massacre.” She added “As a writer, I want to rescue those victims from oblivion, to give a voice to the voiceless.”

  I was really moved by her determination and tenacity, but on the other hand I was worried about her physical and mental health being affected by the content of the massacre. I reminded her that she should take more breaks from her writing to refresh herself. I also advised her that she should try to finish the book as quickly as possible so she could move on to other things. The deadline for handing in her first draft was in January 1997, but she said she would hand it in earlier than that.

  On May 25, 1996, when Iris and I met in New York at my mother’s apartment, Iris conducted a thorough interview with Po-Po, her grandma. Iris asked her grandma about the details of the story about how she and Iris’s grandpa were almost separated during the war in November 1937. Although we had told Iris the story many times, this time she took down all the details in her notebook. She also interviewed my sister Ling-Ling about the horror of the Japanese bombing and her memories of the war. My mother was surprised and commented that she had not met a single young Chinese-American who was so interested in the history of the Sino-Japanese War. She was very impressed indeed.

  Iris had corresponded with Ursula Reinhardt continuously and learned the whole story of Ursula’s grandfather John Rabe. The diary of John Rabe was extremely valuable, and we worried about its safety. We discussed this with Iris for a long time and decided that the best and safest way, before anything could happen, was to ask Reinhardt to donate a copy of the diary to the Yale University Divinity School library as quickly as possible and let the world know about it. Maybe we were being overcautious, but we wanted to rule out any chance that the diary could be stolen or destroyed. On September 23, Reinhardt finally agreed to donate it. We also reminded Iris that she should ask Reinhardt to donate a copy to the Memorial Hall for the Victims of Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, China.

  Iris and Ursula had corresponded with each other through numerous letters and also through telephone conversations, but Iris had never had a chance to go to Germany to meet her. Later, in the summer of 1999, Iris was invited to Switzerland for a conference, but she did not have the time to make a side trip to Germany to visit Ursula. She told me later that was one of her biggest regrets.

  Iris spend the last week of September 1996 writing a 3,000-word article about how she had tracked down John Rabe and found his granddaughter Ursula Reinhardt, who possessed his diary recording the Nanking Massacre. She also wrote a short press release about the discovery. She mailed a copy of the article and the press release to us for our comments. When Shau-Jin and I read the article, we were greatly impressed by Rabe’s life story. Besides Iris and the family of John Rabe, we were the first in the world to learn of his story. In the article, Iris included the last few entries of Rabe’s diary, about his hardship in postwar Berlin in 1946 (translated by Reinhardt). Rabe had written:

  April 18, 1946 . . . We suffer hunger and hunger again—I had nothing to tell, so I didn’t write down anything. In addition to our meager meal we ate acorn flour soup. Mummy (his wife) collected the acorns secretly in autumn. Now as the provisions come to an end, day after day we ate stinging nettle; the young leaves taste like spinach.

  Shau-Jin wrote to Iris that he had cried when he read the article. In reply, Iris wrote on September 27, 1996:

  Dear Dad,

  Thanks for scrutinizing the story so carefully. . . . I still need to read it over a few times before sending it anywhere.

  Your reaction to Rabe’s diary touched me deeply. I have to admit tears came to my eyes, too, when I read the excerpts that Ursula Reinhardt sent me. For a moment, I wanted to put in my article the fact that while poor Rabe was starving to death in his tiny apartment, bewildered and afraid, many of the perpetrators of the Nanking massacre lived on, rich and comfortable, to the end of their days. For instance, Prince Asaka, Hirohito’s uncle whose headquarters was responsible for sending out the order KILL ALL CAPTIVES before the Nanking massacre, retired in glory and spent the rest of his life playing golf. And some of the Japanese war criminals who were executed after the IMFTE have been enshrined in Tokyo.

  Love, Iris

  As soon as Iris finished the final draft of the Rabe article, she mailed a copy to all major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and LA
Times. On September 26, Ignatius Ding, of the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, posted Iris’s article on the Internet with the title “Rabe’s Records of ‘The Rape of Nanking’ Discovered.” We were holding our breath and waiting to see the reaction of the world.

  The first person who picked up the news of John Rabe was Shao Tzeping, the activist in the Chinese-American community who had generously allowed Iris to stay in his house in Rye when Iris was doing research at Yale in early 1995. He called Iris on October 9 and talked to her excitedly for three hours. He later told Iris he had been very worried about the possibility that the Japanese right-wingers might destroy the diary, and he was on a mission to bring the diary to U.S. as soon as possible.

  On October 14, the U.S. bureau of Asahi Shimbun, one of the biggest newspapers in Japan, contacted Iris and interviewed her about the discovery of John Rabe’s diary. In a letter to me, Iris described the interview:

  Dear Mom,

  Don’t worry, I already had my meeting with the reporters at 1 pm, which went well. One was Japanese; the German interpreter was American. They are going to send me a copy of the English-language translation of the report when it is finished.

  We talked in the City Hall building. . . . The Japanese reporter took numerous pictures of me both inside City Hall and in the Rape of Nanking photo display room. The reporter asked me a lot of questions about Rabe and my book. He was keenly interested in knowing more about the total number of deaths in Nanking. He claimed that the topic is very controversial in Japan and the right-wingers claim only 30,000 people died and that the PRC has been accused of spreading all kinds of anti-Japanese propaganda on this issue. I cited plenty of studies that show that the death count exceeded 260,000—possibly 300,000 or even 370,000. I also asserted my opinion that, if anything, the PRC has been too lax in publicizing this event for fear of injuring diplomatic relations with Japan. They gave up their right to seek national reparations from Japan for the incident (even though international law stipulates that individual victims still have the right to demand reparations).

  He said he had to be careful about getting the facts right because after this article comes out, the right-wing people will do everything they can to criticize and discredit him.

  Love, Iris

  Iris told us later that Asahi Shimbun held on to the news for a long time, two months, as it hesitated over whether it should be published or not. Finally, it was published on December 8, a few days before the New York Times article. The Asahi’s German translator, Jeff Heynen, translated the German report into English and gave Iris a copy, which was later used by the New York Times in their article on December 12.

  On October 15, Iris was interviewed by a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News, the biggest English newspaper in the South Bay area. On November 3, a big article on Iris and her discovery of Rabe’s diary was featured in the Mercury News. Iris mailed us a copy of the article, which was accompanied by three photos: one was a side view of Iris standing and looking at the photos hanging on the wall of the photo exhibition, one was a photo of John Rabe, and lastly there was a photo of Iris next to a photo of a woman with an expression of unspeakable agony. With the publication of this article, Iris was instantly known in the Bay area and became famous in the Chinese-American community.

  On November 10, 1996, Iris wrote to me:

  Dear Mom,

  Here is the latest exciting news. . . .

  I shall be the master of ceremonies for what I believe will be the biggest Rape of Nanking conference ever. The event will take place at Stanford University during the first weekend of December. Hundreds of people from more than 50 activist organizations all over the globe will be there—as well as representatives from all the major news organizations of California, China and Japan. The goal of the three-day affair is to discuss legal strategy. How can we seek reparations for victims through international law and UN resolutions? How can we gather evidence of atrocities for lawsuits? What methods should we use to force the Japanese to accept responsibility for its [sic] past misdeeds?

  The turnout for this conference will be twice as large as the one I attended in December 1994. So many scholars and international lawyers and survivors plan to attend that Ignatius Ding had to turn down requests from prominent academics to present papers on subjects unrelated to the main theme of the event.

  Therefore, I was truly surprised, but honored, when Ignatius called me last week and asked me to kick off the opening ceremony as the keynote speaker and MC.

  This evening I talked about my book and John Rabe before a packed audience in the Mountain View City Council Chambers (Ignatius Ding had invited me and another person to speak on the subject). Virtually every seat was taken, and some people stood near the door or against the wall. Afterwards, I was literally BESIEGED. A crowd of reporters, activists, World War II veteran types, and interested readers, both Asian and Caucasian, swarmed about me, offering congratulations and asking a million questions (while rifling through my lecture notes). I think I got the lion’s share of the attention because my English was better than that of the other speakers. Everyone wanted me to lecture at his particular organization/school/college. Parents insisted on taking photographs of me with their children (one introduced me as “a famous author” to a daughter who aspired to be a writer because she had won the local “Young Authors” competition at her school). Some people wanted me to autograph the article that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

  And . . . here’s more good news:

  A big TV network is interviewing members of the Chinese activist community next weekend, and I’ve been invited (once again by Ignatius Ding) to speak on the Rape of Nanking.

  Basic Books told me that Thread of the Silkworm was one of the bestselling books on their list. Also, it was one of the few books they published that received frequent and consistently good reviews.

  More later. . . . Love, Iris

  In the meantime, the activist group, Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, was going to put an ad in the New York Times and asked Iris to write up a short summary about her book on the Rape of Nanking and on Rabe’s diary. This summary would be included in the ad.

  On November 17, 1996, Iris wrote me in an e-mail: “A 600-word article of mine about the Rape of Nanking, complete with byline and description of my book, will be published in a giant New York Times advertisement sponsored by Chinese activists nationwide. It may appear anytime next week, but probably next Sunday. Susan Rabiner is thrilled about all this publicity and said that Basic Books hopes my book will become a blockbuster (by their standards, of course), selling 25,000 to 75,000 or even 100,000 copies.”

  On the first weekend of December 1996, Iris attended the conference on the Rape of Nanking as the MC, sponsored by Chinese-American activist groups on the Stanford University campus. She said it was a great experience for her, since she had never had the chance to speak in front of several hundred people before. She said in her e-mail, written at midnight on Saturday, December 7, 1996:

  . . . the conference is going well, and everyone is impressed by my duties as MC—more details later. I’m exhausted by the entire event, as well as by giving interviews to the media. The New York Times is going to run a long story about my discovery of the Rabe diaries on 12-12-96, the Asahi Shimbun’s story should appear on 12-8-96, and the Metro is almost certain to print a cover story on me. I’ve been mentioned in the World Journal already, and the Christian Science Monitor is probably going to quote me in their story on the conference. Tomorrow I will be interviewed by a Japanese TV station at Stanford.

  Indeed, as Iris said, a big article on her was published in Metro, a free Santa Clara Valley weekly newspaper, on December 12. We were delighted to see that Iris’s face was on the front cover of the newspaper. The article must have made a big impact on the readers in Silicon Valley, as the buzz about Nanking continued to grow.

  A press conference was held in N
ew York on December 12, organized by Shao Tzeping, because December 12, 1996 was the day before the fifty-ninth anniversary of the fall of Nanking and, subsequently, the beginning of the massacre. After Shao talked to Iris, he contacted Ursula Reinhardt in Germany and invited her to New York to formally announce and introduce her grandfather’s diary to the world.

  When we saw the big article published on December 12 in the New York Times, I wondered why Iris was not going to New York for such an important press conference. I immediately called her, but she said that long before the event she had already reserved a plane ticket and paid the fee for a scriptwriting class in Los Angeles and was scheduled to fly there that weekend. She did not want to change her plans at the last minute.

  Fortunately, before December 12, the reporter from the New York Times, David Chen, got hold of Iris and interviewed her extensively on the phone. The article on Rabe’s diary and his life story occupied half of the International page, with a headline that read “At the Rape of Nanking, A Nazi Who Saved Lives.” The subtitle was “The 1937 diary of an unlikely hero bears witness to Japanese atrocities.” With the article, there was a photo of John Rabe and a number of Safety Zone members standing in front their office in the Safety Zone in 1937. The article mentioned Iris: “The diary has only now come to light because of the efforts of Iris Chang, a Sunnyvale, Calif., author. While researching a book on the Nanjing massacre a few years ago, she stumbled upon a few references to Mr. Rabe’s humanitarian efforts.” At the end, the article quoted Iris: “. . . to me, John Rabe is the Oskar Schindler of China, another example of good in the face of evil.”