
DATE: Saturday, November 15, 1997           TAG: 9711140036

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NIA NGINA MEEKS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

AFTER 60 YEARS, LITTLE-KNOWN TRAGEDY IS BEING BROUGHT TO LIGHT

IRIS CHANG had to tell the story.

Once she saw the poster-size pictures of horror in a 1994 California exhibit, she knew her duty.

Women bound to chairs so they could be raped at will. Severed heads of men lining fences. Babies ripped from wombs and speared with bayonets. All in their homeland of Nanking, China. 1937.

Those victims found a voice in Chang's new book, ``The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.'' (Basic Books, $25). It hits shelves next month, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Nanking massacre.

Chang hits South Hampton Roads this weekend to speak. She will keynote an Organization for Chinese Americans banquet in Virginia Beach on Saturday. Sunday, she will appear at Old Dominion University as part of international recognition of the massacre.

``In writing this book, I was driven by a sense of rage, a sense of urgency,'' Chang said in a phone interview from her Sunnyvale, Calif., home. ``For two years, my whole life was funneled into making sure people knew, in writing this book, in understanding what happened during the massacre, better.''

The massacre began December 1937. Japanese troops bent on fulfilling their emperor's desire of expansion marched into Nanking, then China's capital. Under no official orders, these troops raped and slaughtered almost 300,000 Chinese men, women and children in less than two months.

``I grew up believing that people are basically good at heart,'' Chang said. ``That belief has been shaken to its core. I found that people are much more easily manipulated into committing atrocities than I originally thought.''

Chang's grandparents barely escaped that juncture of the raging Sino-Japanese War. Her parents told her the story when she was a little girl.

She would comb the libraries where she lived in Champaign, Ill., looking for a book, any book, on Nanking. Nothing.

Maybe it was not as bad as her parents made it out to be, she would think. But that didn't seem right. Her parents, both professors at the University of Illinois, were knowledgeable people.

Maybe not many people were interested in what became of some Chinese people during the war, she wondered.

``It was a disturbing thought,'' Chang said.

It was one that helped fuel her project. Even as late as 1995, few English-language books documenting the 1937 tragedy existed.

One of Chang's biggest coups was uncovering the diary of John Rabe, a Nazi who sheltered many Chinese during the slaughter. Her discovery made headlines in the New York Times last year.

It was one of the small rewards in a process that consumed her. As the anniversary bore down, Chang threw herself into researcher-writer mode. She waded through thousands of records, transcripts and notes at the National Archives and Yale University. She interviewed survivors in China, where her Mandarin fluency served her.

``It affected me physically. I lost weight, and hair,'' Chang said. ``I had women come up to me asking me what my diet plan was. Here I was, sickly, weak and depressed. And they were saying, `Good for you, Iris. Whatever you're doing, keep it up.' ''

She chuckled. Then her tone grew serious again. With this book, she is leading generations to revelation, a weighty role for a 29-year-old.

``I wrote this book out of moral responsibility,'' she said. ``It's frightening when you look at what's happening in the world. To a large degree, the world is apathetic when it sees these atrocities on CNN.

``When there are things like the rape of Nanking, which we know about. . . ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Iris Chang

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

WHAT: ``A Chinese-American Woman's Exploration on the Rape of

Nanking,'' with guest speaker Iris Chang

WHEN: 2 p.m. today.

WHERE: Kaufman Duckworth Engineering Hall, Old Dominon

University, Norfolk

HOW MUCH: Free.