Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  I don’t think Iris was exaggerating. J. G. Ballard in England had written an excellent review of Iris’s book that was published on February 21, 1999 in London’s Sunday Times. After the review, Iris’s book was on the best-seller list in London. Ballard praised the book highly, saying “I shuddered over each page of this heart-rending book, but strongly urge everyone to read it.” Iris was thrilled, especially because Ballard himself was a respected author and critic whom Iris truly admired. Iris had read his book The Empire of the Sun, which described his childhood war experience in the 1940s, when he and his parents were in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War.

  Later, in the 1980s, our family had watched the movie of the same name, based on his book. After the book review, Iris was able to correspond with him. Ballard was very kind and mailed an autographed bookplate specifically for us. Iris pasted the autographed bookplate into his book and gave it to us as a gift. On the bookplate, he signed “For Shau-Jin and Ying-Ying Chang, Survivors of the Pacific War. Best wishes, J G Ballard.” We were as excited as Iris was!

  Iris told us that it was not uncommon for a book to be criticized when it was first published. As she wrote to us on November 4, 1999, John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath had also been attacked at the time it was published:

  Dear Mom:

  Tonight I read an article about John Steinbeck’s life in the Los Gatos mountains area, and learned that the reaction to THE GRAPES OF WRATH mirrored that of THE RAPE OF NANKING. In a letter to a friend Steinbeck wrote: “The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me for lying about them. So I’m frightened at the rolling might of this thing. It is completely out of hand. I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy.”

  Love, Iris

  One of Iris’s friends told her, “The root of the hostility in some criticism toward you lies in the fact that you got so much fame and attention for The Rape of Nanking. A backlash is inevitable.”

  On the other hand, Iris was happy that so many people supported her. In August 1999, Lou Reda’s documentary The Rape of Nanking, in which Iris was interviewed, was shown on the History Channel. The documentary gave a boost to the sales of Iris’s book. Iris said she could see the ranking of the paperback on Amazon.com soar immediately after the documentary aired.

  But the most gratifying thing was that the Rape of Nanking has now earned its place in world history because of her tireless efforts. On September 22, 1999, she wrote:

  Dear Mom,

  Now, a piece of good news: the Rape of Nanking has earned its place in world history. When I visited the local SuperCrown in Sunnyvale last week, I found the Nanking massacre included in several recently published histories of the 20th century. For instance, author Martin Gilbert devotes pages 161 to 165 of his massive “A History of the Twentieth Century, volume 2: 1933-1951” to the Rape of Nanking, and even quotes me directly on page 162. (His information on Nanking is derived almost exclusively from my book, with the exception of a few quotes gleaned from other works.) The Rape of Nanking also appears in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to 20th Century History” (p. 232), and Peter Jennings’s “The Century,” and Steven Ambrose’s “American Heritage New History of World War II.”

  Remember how I agonized about RON missing the 50th anniversary of World War II? In the end, it didn’t make a difference. In fact, now in retrospect, I believe the timing of THE RAPE OF NANKING was perfect. It appeared in print only three years before the close of the millennium, giving other historians time to include this atrocity in world history epics slated for publication in 1999 or 2000.

  Much love, Iris

  Starting in August of 1999, Iris had spent her time reading all the books and thesis papers she had collected on the Chinese in America. After finishing each book, she typed the major themes, and the most intriguing facts, into her computer databases in preparation for her writing. Her neck and wrists were sore from the long hours of typing. Finally, she hired a student researcher to help her type the information into the computer. The materials she collected were vast. In February, Iris and Brett moved to a new apartment down the street in hopes of being able to cure Brett’s allergies; they suspected the old apartment might have mold problems. Their new apartment was not big, so she hired a carpenter to install shelves on the walls to hold her boxes of books and research materials. When we came to visit them at the end of May, I was impressed to see two walls of shelves full of books and papers.

  Iris said that the more she read, the sharper the picture she had in her mind of individuals, and of the progress of the Chinese as a group. And she said she was no longer threatened by the boxes of books and materials, like she had been at the beginning of this project, but actually looked forward to writing it.

  Iris used to tell me that writing was a lonely journey. She was constantly encouraging and driving herself by words such as “I shall write the book as if I only had one year to live. Write as if I am under a death sentence.”

  Iris reminded herself to continue writing to preserve history. “People die twice—once as mortals, and once in memory. I weep when stories are lost.”

  That was why Iris wanted to preserve the Chinese immigration experience in America. She also wanted to preserve our family history as part of her book. In the spring of 1999, she gave us a list of questions to answer in writing, such as how we’d escaped the Communists and moved to Taiwan, how we’d gotten to the U.S., and what our feelings had been when we’d first reached the U.S. She also videotaped us during interviews when she came home in the summer. She used to say, “The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.” But unfortunately, at end, due to limited space, Iris told us that she was not able to include our own family stories in The Chinese in America, which was already five hundred pages thick!

  In the summer of 1999, PBS aired a program on Chinese-Americans. It was a perfect time for such a program to educate the public about this ethnic minority, especially when the Cox report and Dr. Wen Ho Lee’s case were still in the air. We told Iris that her book on Chinese-Americans, just like the Rape of Nanking, would be right on target yet again!

  Near the end of 1999, Iris told us that she had been chosen as one of the top hundred most influential Asian-Americans of the decade for a millennium issue of a magazine called A Magazine for Asian-Americans. But she declined their invitation to a celebration gala in Los Angeles because she wanted to concentrate on writing. Since August 1999, Iris had declined many invitations for public appearances; some people might be offended, Iris said, but her main goal for the next couple years was writing the next book and finishing it on time. In an e-mail on November 12, 1999, she wrote, “During the last few days I’ve been busy reading, reading, reading . . . highlighting sections from books and giving them to my typist.” And she did exactly that for many months.

  Even in such a time-conscious period, Iris had been unselfishly spending her precious free time helping young students. I recall she told me that while screening to find a student to help her type her research materials into databases, one candidate was a Stanford student who told Iris that she wanted to write about the Rape of Manila and wanted to meet her to seek her advice. Iris made an appointment to meet the student at the Stanford campus near the Thanksgiving holidays. Iris was never stingy to anyone who showed a willingness to learn or who asked her for advice. This was also true for scholars or writers who might be her competitors in the book market; she never hesitated in giving out advice to help their research. For example, Iris told James Bradley, the author of Flyboys, to contact the key person, Bill Doran, for the bulk of the narrative. Iris was always unselfishly helping others—at the root of this was her strong belief that truth should be told and justice restored.

  Iris’s personal life was quite eventful that year as well. In January, she called me to say that she was going to the UC-Berkeley
library to do research for her next book and would stay in a hotel for a week. This was only about a month after she had debated the Japanese ambassador on national TV. Because of the political sensitivity of the debate, I was worried about her physical safety. On the phone, I told her that she should be careful and not travel alone. Iris was upset and lashed out when she heard my words. She thought I was a worrywart, but I considered it ordinary mother-to-daughter advice. After all, what mother isn’t a worrywart to some degree? Immediately, I apologized to her and admitted that I should not be so protective of her. Indeed, she was thirty-one years old and married. But somehow I still felt that she was my little beloved daughter and that I would do anything to protect her, especially since I’d had such an eerie feeling after her debate with the ambassador and still had not been able to shake it.

  Apparently, Iris felt sorry after our phone conversation. On January 18, 1999, right after the call, she sent me an e-mail:

  Dear Mom,

  About last night: there is no need to apologize for anything. I felt terrible about losing my temper. It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t feeling so stressed out.

  I thought about you today as I drove through town. I thought about how you and Dad had shaped me during the last 30 years. Both of you loved me and believed in me at a time when everyone else in town seemed intent on deriding me.

  Did you recall how, as a teenager and college student, I used to confide my ambitions to you—as well as my darkest fears that I might never fulfill them? But you always said, “Don’t worry Iris, you WILL succeed. I KNOW you will. Because there is something unique about you, something special that set you apart from all the other children as you were growing up. I saw this in you, almost from the moment you were born.”

  Those words would sustain me for years—through years of risks, failures and bouts of depression. You may not have realized it at the time, but those words had power. Those words changed my life.

  That’s why we should expect the best for each other, not fear the worst. People tend to move, subconsciously, in the direction of other people’s expectations.

  Love, Iris

  Her e-mail made me cry right there in my office. We knew each other so well. She was my daughter and also my best friend—we never had any hesitation about expressing our innermost feelings. It was gratifying that she still remembered my encouraging words from the unhappy days of her teenage years.

  In January 1999, Diana Zuckerman, Iris’s friend and also the director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research at the time, interviewed Iris about her personal life and her view on women’s roles in family and society. Iris talked about both her father and me. “Both my mother and my father always felt that we children could succeed in anything that we put our minds to. And my father never treated me differently because I was a girl. He encouraged me to study math and science, and I’m tremendously grateful to him for that, because it’s helped me to become a better thinker, more logical and analytical. Both my parents encouraged me to read widely. I never really got a sense that my options were limited just because I was female.”

  One time when Iris was in college, Shau-Jin told her, “Your intelligence is easily in the top one percent of the world’s population. Just remember, you are smarter than at least ninety-nine percent of the men on this planet.” I don’t know where Shau-Jin got that statistic, but I think he must have felt that way after he talked with Iris about some math puzzles or science problems. Iris told me our confidence in her certainly built her self-esteem when she was growing up.

  In February 1999, Iris and Brett moved to a new apartment on Old San Francisco Road in Sunnyvale, several blocks from their old apartment. The apartment they were going to move into was newly constructed and was just down the street. When we visited this new apartment at the end of May, we saw that there was a high-power line near the building, which Iris had not noticed before they signed the contract. About this time, Iris was seriously thinking about having a baby, and after she noticed it, the power line made her worried because there was some speculation in various news reports that close proximity to high-power lines might be linked to cancer. They only lived there for a year before they moved again.

  Brett also changed jobs around this time. He was planning to leave his technology management position at Applied Signal Technology and look for employment as a quantitative analyst at a hedge fund. However, after Brett and Iris attended their first Renaissance Weekend, they felt how fortunate they were to be right in the center of the broadband revolution. They said that many people they met from New York City were considering leaving their jobs and moving to Silicon Valley. So they made a decision to stay in Silicon Valley. Brett accepted a technology-development position at Cisco Systems.

  Besides focusing on her writing, Iris was thinking about having a baby at this time. In January, she told me that she’d had a physical checkup with her OB-GYN, and the result was normal and healthy. She had expressed the desire to have a baby soon. We were very happy to hear that, and gave her all the encouragement we could. I had always told her about the joy of having children. Although raising children might somewhat delay her career, I assured her that the experience was absolutely worthwhile. In a conversation in March 1999, we told Iris that Shau-Jin was going to retire in the coming fall (after thirty years of teaching) and that I planned to retire in 2000. If she had a baby in the next year, we would be glad to come to California to help her. I told her that if that became true, then it would be exactly sixty years between me and the baby!

  In February and March 1999, when the Japanese translation of Iris’s book was a big issue in the news, she noticed that her phone line had some background static noise. One time when she talked to her editor about the Japanese translation issue on the phone, both of them heard the background noise and even heard vague far-away voices. After that, Iris always noticed a clicking sound whenever she made a phone call. She expressed concern that her phone line might be bugged. She reported this to the phone company, and they did an on-site check but could not find anything unusual. She told us she would use more e-mails rather than the phone to communicate with us and with her friends.

  Around this time, Iris and Brett were eager to buy a house and start a family, but Iris was in the middle of a multi-city book tour. Finally in the fall of 1999, Iris finished her travels, and they agreed to start house-hunting. They worked with a realtor based in the Los Gatos Mountains, and soon they made an offer on a house in the mountains of Los Gatos, near Bear Creek. Iris loved the house and described to us the magnificent view from the wide ceiling-to-floor windows. But the house was up on a mountain and was quite isolated. It would take Brett at least a half hour to drive to his office, and the traffic on Highway 17 was usually heavy at rush hour. They realized that living on a mountain was impractical for their lifestyle. Both of them had adapted to an urban way of life. Fortunately, the seller did not accept their offer, and they were both secretly relieved.

  With Thanksgiving approaching, our original plan was to visit our children in California, but the trip was unexpectedly canceled because Shau-Jin was not feeling well the day before. To be on the safe side, we canceled the trip, and, in the end, it was for the best. Though Shau-Jin soon felt better, it turned out that our 21-year-old cat, Iris’s beloved Cat, was seriously ill.

  For several months, Cat had been sick and in bad condition, and soon after Thanksgiving, on Saturday, November 27, we took her to see a vet, and the doctor told us that she was at the end of her life and that he recommended putting her to sleep. Shau-Jin was against the idea, and so was Iris: we wanted Cat to die naturally. So we took her home. Two days later, on November 29, she died. Cat was Shau-Jin’s beloved pet, and her death hit him hard. He wrote to Iris and Michael:

  Dear Iris and Michael:

  The cat died this morning (Nov. 29) during her sleep. She was still alive last night around 12 pm, and was dead when we checked on her this morning at 7 am. We buried her in our back yard,
and planted a persimmon tree at the same spot. It was painful to see her suffer in the past week. Your mom and I are both sad and relieved that she died swiftly and peacefully.

  Love, Dad

  Iris replied that she was glad Cat had died peacefully and that we didn’t have to put her to sleep. She reminisced about the days when she and Cat were young. Iris concluded that Cat had had a long and good life.

  Iris was invited to return to Renaissance Weekend at the end of 1999 for the big celebration of the new millennium. She invited Shau-Jin, me, and Michael to join her and Brett for a family reunion there. We declined, due to scheduling reasons, but we encouraged Michael to join Iris and Brett. Iris bought an elegant purple evening gown from Bloomingdale’s specifically for the occasion. From the photos she took at the Renaissance Weekend, I saw that Iris, Brett, and Michael were enjoying the new millennium eve party immensely.

  On October 27, 1999, Iris wrote me an e-mail to reflect on our mood after a long phone chat. Indeed, we knew that we should feel lucky:

  Dear Mom,

  It was wonderful talking to you and Dad a few nights ago. Few people achieve the level of intimacy and love that we enjoy, as parent and daughter, on an almost nightly basis. As a family, we are blessed, truly blessed, and we must remind ourselves of this every day. Many of my friends don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents—ever. Some people literally CAN’T. In his memoir, THE RICE ROOM, Ben Fong-Torres said that a language barrier divided him from his parents like the Great Wall of China. “This is one of the great sadnesses of my life,” he wrote. “I’m a journalist and a broadcaster—my JOB is to communicate—and I can’t with the two people with whom I want to most.” And then there are those who never knew their mothers. A few nights ago, I leafed through Richard Rhodes’ autobiography, A HOLE IN THE WORLD, after our lunch together. As you know, Rhodes was starved, beaten and psychologically abused as a child by his stepmother (his mother had committed suicide by shooting herself, and his father degenerated into an alcoholic, leaving him virtually incapable of protecting his family). Every time I reread his book, I’m convinced that Richard Rhodes is lucky to be alive. He was a genuine victim (as opposed to, say, Adeline Mah, author of FALLING LEAVES). But even his experience pales in comparison to the stories of abandoned children in PRC orphanages. I don’t even want to get into that right now.