Edited by author 06-26-2006 05:38 AM
I'm not surprised that an American got the truth out. I like to compare the situation of "Second" Rape of Nanking to a hypothetical situation where a child does something bad to another child. Japan, the bully child, beat up China, which is a bad thing. As the bully child or any child who commits a crime would, Japan tried to hide its wrong. Of course the victim child (China) would want to tell others and hope for revenge, but the Communist government of New China, which I compare to the wicked stepmother of the child, suppressed the child's cry. Because of this situation, it would take a mediating party (the American) to reveal the truth. Also, it is perfectly logical for the Chinese-American activists to be from Taiwan. After all, Taiwan is the remnants of Nationalist China, which is the country that suffered the wrath of the Japanese. I am not condoning the acts of suppression by the government of the People's Republic of China, which is why I view it as the "wicked" stepmother, nor am I condoning the hiding of the crime (emphasis on the word "crime") committed by Japan. I am just saying that it is logical for a ABC whose family came from Taiwan to be the one to inform the world of one of history's worst atrocities.

Too bad it took an American of Chinese ancestry to get out the truth and start to hold the Japanese accountable. The communist government in Beijing sure wasn't taking care of business. Many if not most of the originating Chinese-American activists are immigrants from Taiwan, or the children of Taiwanese immigrants, and then after things got rolling other Americans and Candadians of Chinese ancestry and Chinese expats found their consciences and began to get involved. Iris Chang helped start something that neither Tokyo nor Beijing can stop.

Tribute to Iris Chang (San Francisco, December 18, 2005)

An Event to Honor the Memory of Nanking Massacre Victims and to Pay Tribute to Author Iris Chang

Where:
Union Square in downtown San Francisco, California.
When: 12:00 Noon, December 18, 2005 (Sunday).

Due to volatile weather conditions expected on Sunday, we might be forced to change the location for holding the event to the Victory Hall in San Francisco Chinatown at 827 Stockton Street. Please call (415) 699-0628 or (408) 446-4641 to verify the location for the event after 9:00am Sunday morning.

About Iris Chang - "Nanking Massacre a metaphor for evil"

Born in the U.S.A., when she was growing up, Iris Chang listened to her parents' stories of Japanese war crimes in Nanking, China. She came to understand the Nanking massacre as a metaphor for evil. Determined that history should not forgot this enormous crime, Chang wrote The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Chang has also written Thread of the Silkworm, a book about Tsien Hsue-shen, a U.S. rocket scientist who became "Father of Chinese Missiles" after he was deported to his native China. Iris Chang's latest book is titled The Chinese in America: A Narrative History.

Iris Chang became depressed last year while inteviewing American military survivors of the Bataan Death March for another book. She took her own life in November last year.

Biography: Iris Chang
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/bio-0002/irischang.htm

Iris Chang Dead At 36
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/bio-0002/irischang36.htm

There is an event being planned for December 18 in San Francisco at Union Square, Iris will be honored and there will be other activity.

December 9, 1997, the 60th Anniversary of "The Rape of Nanking" Memorial Services, described here -- http://vikingphoenix.com/news/stn/1997/pirn9788.htm -- also at Union Square, Iris was not present for that one.

Iris Chang related forums.

Iris Chang Dead By Foul Play?
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/F64fiQUPN23HB

Iris Chang 1968-2004
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/a8RsjNiknPd6y

Quotes From Iris Chang
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/BFSMhRFhUZvt

Discuss Thread of the Silkworm
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/wxDgCRr8Vge

Discuss "The Chinese in America"
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/N6HD5qd3bLy

Rape of Nanking
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/EZ4ugRj3LucX

Iris Chang Scholarship Fund
http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/UfyhSmZCXftd

Edited by author 09-25-2005 06:25 PM
EARLIER STORY

Nanjing: Death dances with remembrance
By Sheila Melvin International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2005

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/14/features/ballet.php

Edited by author 09-25-2005 06:09 PM
Sept. 27 is Minnie Vautrin Day in Illinois.

Like Iris Chang, Minnie Vautrin, the "American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking", also committed suicide, in Indianapolis in 1941.

Story from Chicago Tribune today about a dance performance in China to depict Nanking Massacre, American ballet dance portrays Minnie Vautrin, story says Iris Chang is revered in Nanjing. http://www.quicktopic.com/28/H/ULEYVEA2HY7m/m42

Edited by author 09-25-2005 05:38 PM

China salutes Illinois hero of massacre by Japanese

THIS IS A TWO PAGE ARTICLE ONLINE, BOTH PAGES ARE INCLUDED.

PAGE 1 OF 2 PAGES

chicagotribune.com >> Local news
China salutes Illinois hero of massacre by Japanese

By Russell Working
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 25, 2005

BEIJING -- When Japanese troops stormed into Nanjing in 1937, murdering 300,000 Chinese and raping thousands of women and girls, an Illinois woman was among a handful of foreigners who stood against the tide.

Minnie Vautrin, a missionary educator from Secor, near Bloomington, hung an American flag outside her missionary college, declared a safe zone and sheltered 10,000 women and children from death by gunfire, sword and bayonet. She held her ground when imperial troops aimed rifles at her, slapped her face, threatened her with death.

"How many thousands were mowed down by guns or bayoneted we shall probably never know," wrote Vautrin, whom massacre survivors called a goddess of mercy. "For in many cases oil was thrown over their bodies and then they were burned."

This summer and fall, in a rare turn of events, Beijing is commemorating the victims of Japanese war crimes through the eyes of a foreigner: Vautrin. In a communist country where the United States is often attacked in media and the arts, an official dance drama tells of the massacre in Nanjing as witnessed by the American woman.

Another former Illinois resident is also at the center of the production "Nanjing 1937." The dance, which opened in Beijing this month and is slated to travel elsewhere in China, portrays Vautrin's ghost guiding the research of author Iris Chang, who is revered here for writing a best-selling account of the atrocity, "The Rape of Nanking," as the city was then known.

Choreographer Tong Ruirui, 28, said she was moved to learn that both women ended up committing suicide--belated victims, she believes, of the massacre. Vautrin suffered a nervous breakdown and killed herself in 1941 at age 53 in Indianapolis. Chang, who was severely depressed, shot herself in California last November. She was 36.

"I wondered what they would say to each other when they met in heaven," said Tong, who directs the China National Chinese Opera and Dance Drama Company production.

Tong's decision to use a foreign perspective to illuminate Chinese suffering is a rarity in a country known for its aggrieved nationalism on matters concerning Japan, whose defeat 60 years ago is being celebrated by operas, photo exhibitions and ceremonies of goose-stepping soldiers laying wreaths. The young choreographer even cast a Texan who is a longtime Beijing dancer as Vautrin.

The dance occurs at a time when a documentary and books have brought about a renewed interest in Vautrin, said Hua-ling Hu, the Carbondale-based author of "American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin." An exhibition of Vautrin's letters and photographs also opened in August in Beijing. Meanwhile in Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has declared Tuesday, Sept. 27, "Minnie Vautrin Day" in response to a request from a citizen.

Not a biography

Because of the fame of her book, Chang is even more revered than Vautrin here. Chinese officials, grateful for her contribution in bringing the massacre before a wide audience, are erecting statues of her. A bronze monument to Vautrin was established at her college in Nanjing in 2002.

But "Nanjing 1937" takes a surprising perspective: It downplays Vautrin's role in saving lives, said Aly Rose, who is dancing the Vautrin role. (Vautrin's college was part of a larger effort by foreigners credited with saving some 250,000 lives by creating places of refuge in the city.) In one scene, Vautrin saves a girl from the Japanese, but the child is later killed.

"The focus of the story isn't that Minnie Vautrin saved all these people," Rose said. "The focus is that Minnie Vautrin witnessed all these people dying, and Iris Chang wrote about it, and now we're going to tell you about it today. ... I kept saying, `Could we at least have one part that testifies that she actually saved lives?'"

Tong insists that the point of the dance is to commemorate the suffering of those who died, not to provide a biography of one woman. "It's from her perspective that we're witnessing all the women being killed and raped, that we see the evil," Tong said. "So we're using her eyes, but not her life story."

Vautrin's relatives say they are honored by the production, even without an explicit reference to her saving thousands of lives. Cindy Vautrin--a Mt. Pleasant, Mich., great-granddaughter of Vautrin's brother--saw the production earlier this summer and believes the play both alludes to the Illinois woman's courage and powerfully captures the emotions of the massacre.

Vautrin would have been a remarkable woman even without her heroism in Nanjing. Born in Secor in 1887 in the family of a French immigrant blacksmith, she received degrees from what is now Illinois State University and the University of Illinois before going to China as a missionary educator. Vautrin undertook a round-the-world study of education that brought her to the post-revolutionary Soviet Union and other countries. She helped found Ginling College in Nanjing, where she was dean of studies at the time Japan attacked in 1937.

As Japanese troops approached, Vautrin refused to be evacuated by the American embassy. Shell-shocked refugees crowded the campus, and she had to contend with a lack of food and poor sanitation. She and other foreigners who established safe zones had only their flags to protect
them.

In her accounts of the massacre, later read by Chang, she described the mayhem.

"There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today," Vautrin wrote. "Thirty girls were taken from the language school last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night--one of the girls was but 12 years old."

Vautrin's 94-year-old niece, Emma Lyon, who lives in Shepherd, Mich., recalled in a phone interview how her aunt's letters described the war zone.

continue >>

PAGE TWO

chicagotribune.com >> Local news
China salutes Illinois hero of massacre by Japanese

By Russell Working
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 25, 2005

<< previous
 
"She told about how bullets went through her office windows," Lyon said, "and how the [Japanese] would come to the campus. She would defy them not to touch one of her girls, and they would slap her."

Vautrin suffered a nervous breakdown in 1940 and returned to the U.S. Lyon planned to visit Indianapolis to introduce Vautrin to her children in 1941, but the troubled missionary begged her not to come. That weekend, she sealed up her kitchen, turned on the gas in an unlit stove and killed herself.

"She didn't think that she had amounted to anything and that she had accomplished anything," Lyon said. "It wasn't her anymore. No, it just wasn't her."

Chang was born in Princeton, N.J., in 1968 and raised in
Champaign-Urbana. She worked briefly as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune before leaving journalism to write books.

Chilling dances

Recently, the dance company gathered to practice for their Beijing opening. It could have been a rehearsal hall anywhere, with rails along the walls and mirrors reflecting the men and women in tights. But a huge red banner hung along the ceiling urged dancers to "fervently serve the plan that's in alignment with the government," in the dancers' translation.

The company was working to depict the rapes that gave the massacre its name. (Japanese nationalists insist that Chinese and Western rape and death estimates are grossly exaggerated.) Four leering male dancers stick out their tongues as they grab female partners and bend them about; the women grimace as if in agony.

There is a chilling power as Rose circles the duets, pleading with Japanese soldiers, who shove her aside.

It has been an emotionally exhausting season for Tong's dancers. Every day, they must weep as they dance. When they sleep they suffer from nightmares: murders, gang-rapes, soldiers in dance halls beheading the women.

While performing in Nanjing, the dancers visited a memorial to the massacre. One photograph showed a pregnant woman whom Japanese soldiers had gang-raped and then cut open, killing her baby before her eyes as she died, Rose said. She is Jewish and her grandfather's family lost relatives in the Holocaust. She is inspired by Vautrin's courage amid another wartime mass murder.

In Rose's view, the reasons are complex for downplaying Vautrin's role in saving lives.

It is hard to acknowledge the heroics of non-Chinese amid a national tragedy. After all, Chinese troops failed to protect Nanjing against the Japanese.

"It would really be asking a lot to show that Minnie Vautrin saved all these people," Rose said. "It's a challenge because she's not Chinese."

----------

rworking@tribune.com

Previous page Jump to page: 1 2

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Edited by author 09-25-2005 02:50 AM
Iris Chang appears to have been a wonderfully talented and prodigiously motivated writer & researcher. And so it's natural to wonder if her clinical depression was a result of her herculean work habits (and the painful projects she chose--Nanjing, Bataan, immigrant Chinese laborers) or if it always dwelled within her to a degree. Or both. Did she suffer a kind of PTSD from a combination of extreme work habits and agonizing subject matter that drove her over the edge? Or was she the "victim" of a certain personality structure? I can't help but think of Sylvia Plath, her talent, drive, and perfectionism.

Maybe the projects tackled by Iris require just that kind of sacrifice, making her a martyr to the work, romantic as that may sound. But it's also sad that she wasn't able to communicate the need for help until she collapsed, and even then, she wasn't able to save herself.

Foul play is a tantalizing possibility, but it's also a cop out, I think, a parlor game for conspiracy enthusiasts or those who don't want to accept the simple, tragic reality of suicide. A very talented and highly motivated writer/researcher succumbs to emotional, psychological, and physical exhaustion; she is overwhelmed by the darkness of her project. When it's time to receive help, she can't, or it's too late. She leaves behind a child and husband, parents and brother. A certain inner emotional compass isn't there. She doesn't know how to take care of herself except to buy an antique gun and end her life.

REMEMBER 911 --- http://vikingphoenix.com/photos/911-2003/911-2003-1.html

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I just found the shocking news today. I am just trying to catchup on what happened. Thanks for the many link I am just begining to understand and mourn the lost of such a talented gifted writer. PTSD makes a lot of sense. I read her book while I was called out during the recent Gulf War. It was hard to put the book "Rape Of Nanking" down. Even though the events happened 60 years ago in another continent the souls of the victims cries out through the page. It mus be an ordeal to do the research and put the book together. A young soldier who recently served in Afghanistan in the special mortuary service commited suicide with a gun. He was a victim of PTSD also. The trauma of taking care of remains of his fellow soldiers effected him. Perhaps we can all learn the vulnerability of our mental health and seek help or provide help and sensitivity for those who are in need of help.

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Thank you everyone for the recent posts.

Yes, I will, just a matter of time. As I grew up with WWII Japanese war crime stories as Iris did, it is a matter of how WE let more people heard of her REPORT (not story). We should let as many people know the facts of her book as possible. It is a great regret that the Holocaust has attracted far more attention than the equivalent Japanese crime during WWII in China and elsewhere. The internet will do what should have been done decades ago. Let's all do our part to preserve the good human nature.

Lung-Ji Chang in /m32,

Please read the book, I know it is hard. I loaned the book to my cousin. He gave it back to me after two months, said he could not read more than a few pages. We must learn so we can speak with a clear voice on this subject.