Woman Who Could Not Forget (40 page)

She arrived for the Uni High graduation on June 5. On Saturday, June 6, Roberts invited Iris and us to a pre-ceremony luncheon with her former English teachers, Charlene Tibbetts and Adele Suslick, who had helped Iris tremendously in her high-school years. It was a wonderful reunion.

When we stepped into the Tryon Festival Theatre of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the U of I campus for the graduation ceremony, we saw that several hundred people were already sitting there waiting for the ceremony to begin. After several speakers delivered their congratulations to the class of 1998, Iris was introduced as the recipient of the Max Beberman Distinguished Alumni Award. They showed several slides of Iris in her Uni years. One slide showed her with a group of her classmates, with her head circled in the photo. The picture reminded me of all the things that had happened during that period. Since then, how much had changed!

While those memories ran through my mind, I saw that Iris had already stepped up to the podium on the stage and accepted the award plaque. Now she was starting to give advice to the graduating class of 1998. My mind could not quite concentrate on her speech. My thoughts were racing back and forth between the past and the present. It seemed like I was in a dream. I could not believe that in the past thirteen years, she had changed from an unrecognized high-school student to the author of a
New York Times
best seller. I knew some people might think she was just plain lucky, but I knew what a journey she had gone through. Every bit of her success was due to her hard work, her determination, and her conviction, all of which she delivered in her speech that day.

She said, in a beautiful clear voice, “. . . First of all, please, please, PLEASE believe in THE POWER OF ONE. One person can make an enormous difference in the world. One person—actually, one IDEA—can start a war, or end one, or subvert an entire power structure. One discovery can cure a disease or spawn new technology to benefit or annihilate the human race. You are ONE individual and can change millions of lives. Think big. Do not limit your vision and do not EVER compromise your dreams or ideals. . . .”

I could not hold back my tears when she said “I must thank my parents, who are in the audience today and who have always believed in me from Day One. They were the ones who inspired me to never set limits for myself in my dreams and who have served over the last few years as my greatest mentors, confidants, and friends. Mom, Dad—I love you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” My eyes were wet with tears throughout her speech.

On April 22, 1998, when Iris was in Salt Lake City on her book tour, she had called to inform us that during the signing in one of the bookstores in Salt Lake, a Korean reporter had asked her how she reacted to the criticism of the Japanese ambassador who said that her book was inaccurate and biased. Iris was shocked to hear the accusation and she said she could not believe that an ambassador could make such comments on a book in public! We told her she should not jump to that conclusion and asked her to look into what exactly the ambassador had said and deal with it accordingly.

Later, Iris found out that on April 21, the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., Kunihiko Saito, in a press conference in Washington, D.C., had indeed openly criticized her book as “contain(ing) many extremely inaccurate descriptions and one-sided views. . . .” Iris was outraged and asked us “Can you imagine what would happen if a
German
ambassador to the U.S. made a parallel statement about a book on the Holocaust?”

“There is definitely different treatment of World War II in Asia and in Europe in this country,” she also said. She was preparing a rebuttal. Of course, we told her we were behind her one hundred percent. Like her, I just could not believe a Japanese ambassador would openly attack a book.

On April 24, the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia issued a strong statement denouncing the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., and urged the American and Chinese governments to ask Japan to immediately dismiss Saito for making such a distorting statement.

On the same day, Basic Books also released a strong statement against the Japanese ambassador. In the statement, Jack McKeown, President and CEO of Basic, said: “Iris Chang has performed a vital service in turning a spotlight on the tragedy of sixty years ago in Nanking. As publishers, we will continue to strive to bring the book’s message to the widest possible audience. Many eminent scholars and historians have reviewed this book in glowing terms. . . .” The statement also said that the book was now in its seventeenth printing with over 130,000 books in print. “It remained on the
New York Times
‘Best Sellers’ list for thirteen weeks, and foreign rights have been sold in Germany, Spain, Taiwan, China, Czechoslovakia, and Italy.” The statement also announced that “The book will be published in Japan, despite negative publicity in Japan, by publisher Kashiwashobo.”

In a press release, Iris asked the ambassador to name the “erroneous facts” and challenged him to a public debate on national television.

The news of the criticism of the book by the Japanese ambassador and the challenge for a debate from Iris had been reported in newspapers and media widely in this country and overseas. However, Saito declined to cite any specific inaccuracies in the book and did not respond to her challenge for a public debate.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles gave Iris tremendous support. Rabbi Cooper told her that he had sent his protest letter to the Japanese embassy and to all news media outlets. He said, “Can you imagine a German ambassador making a similar statement?” He told Iris “We’ll be there for you!”

Early in April, the Associated Press reported that a monthly magazine in Japan,
Shokun
, had featured an article that criticized the Foreign Ministry of the Japanese government for being silent about “anti-Japanese” books such as
The Rape of Nanking
. Iris and Shau-Jin and I speculated that the Japanese government must be under pressure from the ultranationalists to do something about it.

The news of Iris’s challenge to the Japanese ambassador for a public TV debate was also in
Time
magazine’s May 11, 1998 issue. The news said, “. . . Saito’s attack on Chang has so far drawn fire from only a few organizations, but Tokyo is less concerned about Saito than about the damage the book may be doing to Japan’s image in the U.S.”

It was not true that Saito’s criticism had “drawn fire from only a few organizations.” Actually, as far as I knew, Saito’s remarks on Iris’s book had triggered strong reactions in the U.S., and especially from Chinese-Americans and overseas Chinese communities. Many readers wrote letters of protest to newspapers. A number of Chinese newspapers’ editorials supported Iris. The Chinese consulate general in San Francisco on May 6 had issued a statement in support of Iris’s book and criticizing the Japanese ambassador for being extremely irresponsible by making a public announcement distorting history. The statement said that the Nanking massacre was one of numerous atrocities committed by Japan’s militarists during its war of aggression against China. “It’s an undeniable history,” said the Chinese consulate general, and he demanded Japan respect the truth.

On May 8, a spokesman from the Chinese embassy in Washington also issued a strong statement refuting Saito’s criticism of Iris’s book and asking the Japanese government to face their past war crimes with honesty. To my knowledge, it’s quite rare that a book could generate so much international attention and cause the attack and counter-attack of governments of two countries.

Because the Chinese embassy and the Chinese consulate in the U.S. issued statements in support of Iris’s book, Japanese right-wing Web sites claimed that the Chinese government was behind Iris’s book. This was absurd. Iris had never contacted the Chinese government while researching her book. Besides, Iris’s first book,
Thread of the Silkworm,
criticized Chinese Communism.

In the meantime, a Japanese movie called
Pride
glorified World War II Japanese class-A war criminal General Hideki Tojo as a hero. The movie had a preview in April and was shown in Japanese theaters in May. Showing the movie in Japan coincided chronologically with Saito’s criticism of Iris’s book. This movie triggered another wave of media coverage on Iris’s book and its historical context.

On May 15, Iris e-mailed me and said that a reporter from
Time
in Tokyo had asked about her reaction to the film
Pride.
Her response was: “This film is yet another example of Japanese right-wing denial of the Rape of Nanking and other Japanese war atrocities. But no movie can suppress the basic facts of World War II.

“This film will do more damage to Japan than good, because it has already enraged opinion-makers and politicians all over Asia and the U.S. If Japanese society embraces
Pride,
it will send a clear signal to the international community that the present generation of Japanese endorses the behavior of the wartime government.

“In the end, the truth will prevail. I fervently hope and believe that time will allow more people in Japan to find the courage to say ‘This is not the truth about ourselves. This movie is a dishonest depiction of our past.’”

In Japan, it was reported that Tojo’s granddaughter, Yuko Tojo, was the force behind the movie, which was rumored to be based on a book she had written. She was trying to whitewash her grandpa’s war-crime image. General Hideki Tojo, Japan’s wartime prime minister, was executed as Japan’s top war criminal in 1948, but was portrayed in the movie as a patriot and gentle family man. A
Washington Post
article on May 25 read: “Fifty years after the war, a remarkable perception gap still exists between Japan and the rest of world. . . . Many in those neighboring countries are still deeply angry at what they see as Japan’s lack of remorse, and
Pride
is certain to inflame those bad feelings.”

One scene in the movie, according to one report, was that Tojo refused to believe that Japanese soldiers had carried out the Nanking Massacre in China. After I read the report, I told Iris what a good thing it was that her book had just come out! I said to Iris that Tojo had a granddaughter who tried to cover up her grandfather’s hideous war acts, but that thankfully
my
father had a granddaughter who told the world what had
really
happened in 1937. It’s really a shame that up to this day, Japan as a nation has not been able to face up to its war crimes, and no written official apology has ever been issued.

Iris’s book was praised by American historians and respected by Chinese communities internationally, but Japanese ultranationalists tried to discredit her by any means possible. On June 12, according to AP news, a group of Japanese “academics” in a conference in Tokyo accused Iris’s book of being misleading and exaggerating the Nanking Massacre. They blamed the killings on the Chinese themselves. They denied the size of the death toll in the massacre. They also questioned the photos in her book. When the AP reporter tracked Iris down and asked her reaction to the Japanese accusation, Iris was in Lake Placid, New York to give a speech to the Cato Institute. Iris refuted the accusations with dignity and eloquence, one by one, over the phone. She told the reporter that the Japanese revisionists’ denials ultimately only hurt Japan itself.

When the AFP reporter, Karen Lowe, telephone-interviewed Iris about the accusations of these six Japanese “academics,” Iris replied: “These revisionists are engaged in a second rape of Nanking—the rape of history.” In the AFP report of June 22, William Kirby, the Harvard University history professor and chairman (who wrote the Foreword for Iris’s Nanking book), told Lowe, “This business of the body count is really a gruesome exercise in historical revisionism. If 100,000, 300,000, or 50,000 were killed, is it morally any different?”

“There really isn’t any question that it was a policy of terror and murder,” Kirby added. “Anyone who suggests that the Rape of Nanking never happened is in historical Never-Never Land.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center also commented: “Japan cannot be trusted as a member of the community of nations until it once and for all, sincerely and genuinely, apologizes for its deeds during World War II—beginning with Nanking.”

I would be lying if I said that these accusations about her book had no impact on Iris’s feelings. Even though we knew, and Iris knew, that the criticisms had no basis, it still affected her life in one way or another. It was very stressful for her that her book was under constant questioning and scrutiny. Worse yet, at this time she was also engaging in an exchange of opinions with her Japanese publisher, Kashiwashobo. The publisher, translating her book into Japanese, confessed to her that it was under the threats of ultranationalists in Japan. Consequently, Iris was bombarded with e-mails from the publisher with all sorts of questions and some unreasonable requests, indicating that Kashiwashobo was under tremendous pressure from the right-wingers in Japan.