samsloan
2012-06-15 04:37:51 UTC
The Rape Of Nanking The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II
ISBN 4871872181
http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871872181
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871872181
The Rape Of Nanking
The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II
by Iris Chang
Introduction by Sam Sloan
Ishi Press is a Japanese company based in Tokyo and specializing in
books on go, shogi, chess and math. We also reprint old, long out of
print books, in almost every case books first published before 1978
and in most cases books first published before 1950.
So, it is surprising, even shocking that Ishi Press would reprint this
book since it was first published on the recent date of 1997.
There are several reasons for this: First, this work is of important
historical significance and it must be preserved. However, the title
thesis is untrue. The book calls itself “The Rape of Nanking The
Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II”. However, it is not forgotten. I
know of nobody who has forgotten it. There are, however, some people
who have never heard of it, and those people need to learn about it
for the important lessons it teaches.
The book claims that the Japanese People are not allowed to know what
happened in Nanking China, which is now called Nanjing China, in 1937
and 1938. However, the fact that Ishi Press is publishing this book in
Tokyo Japan proves that this is not true. More importantly, this book
has already been published in the Japanese language in Japan more than
ten years ago.
The lesson that this book teaches should not be that the Japanese are
horrible people who do terrible things, nor is it that this is an
isolated incident from a long time ago. It is also not that these were
Asians and that we Europeans are superior and would not do these
things.
What really is a “Forgotten Holocaust” is what the Americans did
during the War in Vietnam. During the My Lai Incident of March 16,
1968, American Troops acting under orders raped and then killed an
entire village of young women and their children. More than three
hundred dead bodies were found, all killed by the Americans.
In one typical incident, a US soldier found a young Vietnamese girl
aged about 17 and, since the soldier probably hat a lot of experience
with bar girls in Saigon, he ordered the village girl to give him a
blow job, while putting a gun to her head. The soldier dropped this
pants and of course the girl started giving him a blow job.
Seeing this, his commander order him to stop receiving the blow job,
as he was on military duty, and to pull up his pants. The soldier did
so and, after pulling up his pants, shot the girl in the head, killing
her.
Of course, you will say that this was an isolated incident and these
pictures we see of more than one hundred dead bodies of women and
children lined up are nothing to be concerned about now in this modern
age.
But the soldier who shot the 17-year-old girl in the head after she
had given him a blow job was never punished, as he was just following
orders. Instead, his commander, Colonel William Calley, was arrested
and prosecuted for this.
But after Colonel William Calley was convicted and sentenced for his
crime of killing more than three hundred innocent people, President
Richard M. Nixon officially pardoned him. By issuing this official
pardon, President Nixon declared to the world that it is perfectly OK
to order the murder of more than three hundred innocent villagers, as
long it is only USA troops who are doing this.
Colonel Calley got out of prison on the official pardon by President
Nixon and nowadays has an enjoyable life, living on the donations sent
to him by his many admirers.
Colonel Calley was prosecuted only after several dozen US Army
soldiers wrote letters to Congressmen describing in detail the
massacre. As a result of these letters, Major Colin Powell was
assigned to investigate this. The result of his “investigation” was
that Major Colin Powell issued a statement "In direct refutation of
this portrayal”. As a reward for his great contribution in covering up
the murder of more that three hundred innocent people, Major Colin
Powell was promoted to the rank of four-star general and was later
made Secretary of State of the United States.
In spite of the good works of Colin Powell in covering up these
crimes, they eventually became public knowledge. Colonel Calley was
convicted and sentenced to life in prison but was ordered to be held
under house arrest only. President Nixon pardoned him in 1974, so
Calley never had to serve a day in prison. His superior officers, who
had given Calley the orders to kill all these people, have never been
prosecuted or publicly identified.
Of course you will say that this was an isolated incident and it
happened along ago. We would never do things like that any more, you
will say. Right??
However, on July 22, 2002, an American supplied F-16 fighter jet
dropped a one ton bomb onto an apartment building in the middle of the
night in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, killing at
least 15 unrelated children. The target of this bomb was chess player
Saleh Shahade who was living in the apartment building. Fifty others
required medical attention as a result of the attack. Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon praised it as "one of our greatest successes”.
Many US Congressmen congratulated Israel for this killing of the 15
children using an American war plane.
In case you think that it is just the Americans who go about randomly
killing innocent children, you are mistaken. It was also not only the
Japanese who used rape as a weapon of war. However, unlike the
Japanese and the Americans who merely killed the girls after raping
them, and did so just for purposes of sexual entertainment and
enjoyment, the Europeans after raping them hold them prisoner until
they give birth, for the broader goal of integrating the races. During
the Yugoslav Wars from 1991 to 1999, an estimated 50,000 girls were
gang raped under orders from the military commanders, who often stood
there watching as the rapes took place. These girls were then held
under detention for nine months until they were about to give birth.
The rape victims were almost always Muslim women. The perpetrators
were almost all Christian Serbs. There are an estimated 35,000
children born this way. There is no report on the ultimate fate of
these children, who would by now be teenagers assuming that their
mothers did not kill them as soon as they were born.
The Rapes in Nanjing in 1937 and 1938 must be studied in this context.
There is no doubt that these rapes and killings occurred. These are
historical facts. However, it is not true than an effort has been
successful in covering-up these events. Almost every adult Japanese
person has heard of the Rapes of Nanjing. What is true is that many if
not most Japanese do not believe it. They think it is a hoax.
This must be taken along side the fact that many and indeed probably
most Japanese do not even know that Japan lost World War II. This is
incredible but true. All that most Japanese today know about it comes
from Emperor Hirohito's 1945 statement “the war situation has
developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage”. They still to this
day do not understand that this meant that Japan had lost the war.
Since Iris Iris Chang did not herself visit Japan, she could not have
fully appreciated this. The failure of Iris Chang to go to Japan and
extend her study to the results of the war there is a major weakness
in her work.
Her complaint that Japan has failed to apologize for the Rape of
Nanjing seems strange. For example, let us say that somebody killed
both my mother and my father. Would I go to that person and demand
that he apologize for killing my mother and father? Ridiculous! How
can an apology erase or make OK the rapes and murders of more than
300,000 people?
Her complaint that the Rapes of Nanjing are forgotten is simply wrong.
Those of us old enough to remember have not forgotten. Back then,
there was no TV. Americans got their visual news from Movietone News,
that consisted of short reels shown between the main features in movie
theaters. These horrific scenes of the Rapes of Nanjing were widely
reported on Movietone News, broadcast in movie theaters throughout the
USA in 1938. Military Veterans from that time will still tell you that
the Rapes of Nanjing were one of the primary motivations for which the
Americans risked their own lives to first bomb and then to invade
Japan. I had five uncles who fought in World War II and although they
always gave the Bombing of Pearl Harbor as their primary reason for
going to war, they would then give the Rape of Nanking as the second
reason. This was also the reason that the Americans would not accept a
simple armistice such as the those that ended World War I and the
Korean War. The Americans wanted to invade and punish Japan for the
Rapes of Nanjing and part of that punishment included having sexual
intercourse with all of their women. Every returning GI will tell you
about this.
It also needs to be stated that it was not only in China that the
Japanese did these atrocities. Much the same atrocities were committed
by the Japanese in the Philippines and in what is now Indonesia. Ask
any Filipina and they will tell you about this. They will tell you
that as sport the Japanese used to throw newborn babies up into the
air and cut them into two in mid-air with a sword. This practice was
reported all over the Philippines and some still alive say that they
saw this with their own two eyes.
In order to save bullets, the Japanese would bury their prisoners
alive. These were not random acts of violence by untrained men. These
were disciplined men following military orders. A military order found
on a captured Japanese soldier in Manila in 1945 contains the
following statement:
“When Filipinos are to be killed, they must be gathered into one place
and be disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower
must not be used to excess. Because the disposal of dead bodies is a
troublesome task, they should be gathered into houses which are
scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into
the river.”
Some elderly Japanese men who participated in these atrocities 70
years ago are now starting to talk publicly about this. They say that
they did not reveal this sooner because they did not want to embarrass
their own families. Now that their family members are all dead, they
can talk about this for the first time.
The real cover-up going on now is about what happened to Iris Chang
herself. One reprint of this book states simply “[Iris Chang] passed
away in 2004”. An event such as putting a gun into your own mouth and
blowing your own brains out is not generally described as “passing
away”.
Iris Chang was born in Princeton New Jersey on March 28, 1968. Both of
her parents were university professors who had immigrated from China.
She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1989 and worked for
the New York Times, the Chicago Herald Tribune and the Associated
Press before starting on a career of writing books.
Her first book was about a Chinese-American scientist who was one of
the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California
Institute of Technology. During the McCarthy Era, he was suddenly
accused of being a Communist spy and was placed under house arrest for
five years. When he was released, he had lost his security clearance
and could no longer work, so he went to China and founded another jet
propulsion laboratory there. This of course became one of the
stupidest episodes in the history of the USA securities services.
Her second book was this book about the Rape of Nanjing. This book
made her famous, a celebrity. However, due to the nature of this book,
it also subjected her to criticism. It made her known as one of the
major advocates of a Congressional resolution to urge the Japanese
government to apologize for war crimes. She met with First Lady
Hillary Clinton in 1999 to discuss this issue. The Times of London
reported:
“She confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on
television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with
his mere acknowledgment "that really unfortunate things happened, acts
of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". "It
is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such
expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her
reaction.
Her third book, The Chinese in America was not as successful. As a
history book it was a good book, but it carried too much self-pity.
All immigrant groups have experienced a hard time upon first reaching
America and the Chinese could not have expected an easier time than
the others had.
It seems that the lack of success of her third book, in that it was
less successful than her second book, was upsetting to her. Her
suicide notes indicate this. She was working on a fourth book, this
one about the Bataan Death March, when she committed suicide.
Nobody can ever say why anybody commits suicide. Iris Chang was no
doubt deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research
into the Rapes of Nanjing, but this should not have caused her to kill
herself. Rather, this should have given her a reason to live. Probably
almost everybody thinks about suicide an some point in their life.
Fortunately, only a small percentage of us actually carry it out.
Suicide was not just a passing thought, as the evidence shows that
Iris Chang had been thinking of suicide for quite some time. She had
everything to live for. She was a beautiful woman, a famous person,
with millions of readers and fans, with no serious financial worries
and with a devoted and concerned family. Yet such factors often do not
stop someone from taking their own life.
Iris Chang suffered a nervous breakdown because of working too hard by
touring America giving speeches and interviews promoting her books
while also working on her next book about the Bataan Death March. In
August, 2004, a man who was assisting her research helped her check
into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, where she
was placed on medication for three days and then released to her
parents.
Three months later, on November 9, 2004, she was found dead in her car
near her home in San Jose, California. At about 9:00 AM, Iris Chang
was found dead in her car on a rural road south of Los Gatos,
California and west of State Route 17 in Santa Clara County.
Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth
with revolver.
It was discovered that she had left behind three suicide notes, each
dated November 8, 2004. The first, the "Statement of Iris Chang",
said:
I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. I will
stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. I will follow the
doctor's orders for medications. I promise not to hurt myself. I
promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide.
The next note was a draft of the third:
When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations
and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the
minute. It is far better that you remember me as I was — in my heyday
as a best-selling author — than the wild-eyed wreck who returned from
Louisville... Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take — the
anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. I know that my
actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who
love me the most. Please forgive me. Forgive me because I cannot
forgive myself.
The third note included:
There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never
understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about
this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being
recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could
have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I
will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop
hounding me.
Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my
safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling
that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside
my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention
at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me.
I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from
myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to
withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.
Needless to say, the suggestions in her notes that the government, the
CIA and the mental hospital in Louisville are all engaged in some sort
of conspiracy to discredit her and will never stop hounding her are
signs of emotional disturbance. Nobody can be blamed for this. Nobody
can say that something could have or should have been differently done
to prevent this tragedy from occurring.
Sam Sloan
San Rafael California
USA
June 14, 2012
http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871872181
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871872181
ISBN 4871872181
http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871872181
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871872181
The Rape Of Nanking
The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II
by Iris Chang
Introduction by Sam Sloan
Ishi Press is a Japanese company based in Tokyo and specializing in
books on go, shogi, chess and math. We also reprint old, long out of
print books, in almost every case books first published before 1978
and in most cases books first published before 1950.
So, it is surprising, even shocking that Ishi Press would reprint this
book since it was first published on the recent date of 1997.
There are several reasons for this: First, this work is of important
historical significance and it must be preserved. However, the title
thesis is untrue. The book calls itself “The Rape of Nanking The
Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II”. However, it is not forgotten. I
know of nobody who has forgotten it. There are, however, some people
who have never heard of it, and those people need to learn about it
for the important lessons it teaches.
The book claims that the Japanese People are not allowed to know what
happened in Nanking China, which is now called Nanjing China, in 1937
and 1938. However, the fact that Ishi Press is publishing this book in
Tokyo Japan proves that this is not true. More importantly, this book
has already been published in the Japanese language in Japan more than
ten years ago.
The lesson that this book teaches should not be that the Japanese are
horrible people who do terrible things, nor is it that this is an
isolated incident from a long time ago. It is also not that these were
Asians and that we Europeans are superior and would not do these
things.
What really is a “Forgotten Holocaust” is what the Americans did
during the War in Vietnam. During the My Lai Incident of March 16,
1968, American Troops acting under orders raped and then killed an
entire village of young women and their children. More than three
hundred dead bodies were found, all killed by the Americans.
In one typical incident, a US soldier found a young Vietnamese girl
aged about 17 and, since the soldier probably hat a lot of experience
with bar girls in Saigon, he ordered the village girl to give him a
blow job, while putting a gun to her head. The soldier dropped this
pants and of course the girl started giving him a blow job.
Seeing this, his commander order him to stop receiving the blow job,
as he was on military duty, and to pull up his pants. The soldier did
so and, after pulling up his pants, shot the girl in the head, killing
her.
Of course, you will say that this was an isolated incident and these
pictures we see of more than one hundred dead bodies of women and
children lined up are nothing to be concerned about now in this modern
age.
But the soldier who shot the 17-year-old girl in the head after she
had given him a blow job was never punished, as he was just following
orders. Instead, his commander, Colonel William Calley, was arrested
and prosecuted for this.
But after Colonel William Calley was convicted and sentenced for his
crime of killing more than three hundred innocent people, President
Richard M. Nixon officially pardoned him. By issuing this official
pardon, President Nixon declared to the world that it is perfectly OK
to order the murder of more than three hundred innocent villagers, as
long it is only USA troops who are doing this.
Colonel Calley got out of prison on the official pardon by President
Nixon and nowadays has an enjoyable life, living on the donations sent
to him by his many admirers.
Colonel Calley was prosecuted only after several dozen US Army
soldiers wrote letters to Congressmen describing in detail the
massacre. As a result of these letters, Major Colin Powell was
assigned to investigate this. The result of his “investigation” was
that Major Colin Powell issued a statement "In direct refutation of
this portrayal”. As a reward for his great contribution in covering up
the murder of more that three hundred innocent people, Major Colin
Powell was promoted to the rank of four-star general and was later
made Secretary of State of the United States.
In spite of the good works of Colin Powell in covering up these
crimes, they eventually became public knowledge. Colonel Calley was
convicted and sentenced to life in prison but was ordered to be held
under house arrest only. President Nixon pardoned him in 1974, so
Calley never had to serve a day in prison. His superior officers, who
had given Calley the orders to kill all these people, have never been
prosecuted or publicly identified.
Of course you will say that this was an isolated incident and it
happened along ago. We would never do things like that any more, you
will say. Right??
However, on July 22, 2002, an American supplied F-16 fighter jet
dropped a one ton bomb onto an apartment building in the middle of the
night in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, killing at
least 15 unrelated children. The target of this bomb was chess player
Saleh Shahade who was living in the apartment building. Fifty others
required medical attention as a result of the attack. Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon praised it as "one of our greatest successes”.
Many US Congressmen congratulated Israel for this killing of the 15
children using an American war plane.
In case you think that it is just the Americans who go about randomly
killing innocent children, you are mistaken. It was also not only the
Japanese who used rape as a weapon of war. However, unlike the
Japanese and the Americans who merely killed the girls after raping
them, and did so just for purposes of sexual entertainment and
enjoyment, the Europeans after raping them hold them prisoner until
they give birth, for the broader goal of integrating the races. During
the Yugoslav Wars from 1991 to 1999, an estimated 50,000 girls were
gang raped under orders from the military commanders, who often stood
there watching as the rapes took place. These girls were then held
under detention for nine months until they were about to give birth.
The rape victims were almost always Muslim women. The perpetrators
were almost all Christian Serbs. There are an estimated 35,000
children born this way. There is no report on the ultimate fate of
these children, who would by now be teenagers assuming that their
mothers did not kill them as soon as they were born.
The Rapes in Nanjing in 1937 and 1938 must be studied in this context.
There is no doubt that these rapes and killings occurred. These are
historical facts. However, it is not true than an effort has been
successful in covering-up these events. Almost every adult Japanese
person has heard of the Rapes of Nanjing. What is true is that many if
not most Japanese do not believe it. They think it is a hoax.
This must be taken along side the fact that many and indeed probably
most Japanese do not even know that Japan lost World War II. This is
incredible but true. All that most Japanese today know about it comes
from Emperor Hirohito's 1945 statement “the war situation has
developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage”. They still to this
day do not understand that this meant that Japan had lost the war.
Since Iris Iris Chang did not herself visit Japan, she could not have
fully appreciated this. The failure of Iris Chang to go to Japan and
extend her study to the results of the war there is a major weakness
in her work.
Her complaint that Japan has failed to apologize for the Rape of
Nanjing seems strange. For example, let us say that somebody killed
both my mother and my father. Would I go to that person and demand
that he apologize for killing my mother and father? Ridiculous! How
can an apology erase or make OK the rapes and murders of more than
300,000 people?
Her complaint that the Rapes of Nanjing are forgotten is simply wrong.
Those of us old enough to remember have not forgotten. Back then,
there was no TV. Americans got their visual news from Movietone News,
that consisted of short reels shown between the main features in movie
theaters. These horrific scenes of the Rapes of Nanjing were widely
reported on Movietone News, broadcast in movie theaters throughout the
USA in 1938. Military Veterans from that time will still tell you that
the Rapes of Nanjing were one of the primary motivations for which the
Americans risked their own lives to first bomb and then to invade
Japan. I had five uncles who fought in World War II and although they
always gave the Bombing of Pearl Harbor as their primary reason for
going to war, they would then give the Rape of Nanking as the second
reason. This was also the reason that the Americans would not accept a
simple armistice such as the those that ended World War I and the
Korean War. The Americans wanted to invade and punish Japan for the
Rapes of Nanjing and part of that punishment included having sexual
intercourse with all of their women. Every returning GI will tell you
about this.
It also needs to be stated that it was not only in China that the
Japanese did these atrocities. Much the same atrocities were committed
by the Japanese in the Philippines and in what is now Indonesia. Ask
any Filipina and they will tell you about this. They will tell you
that as sport the Japanese used to throw newborn babies up into the
air and cut them into two in mid-air with a sword. This practice was
reported all over the Philippines and some still alive say that they
saw this with their own two eyes.
In order to save bullets, the Japanese would bury their prisoners
alive. These were not random acts of violence by untrained men. These
were disciplined men following military orders. A military order found
on a captured Japanese soldier in Manila in 1945 contains the
following statement:
“When Filipinos are to be killed, they must be gathered into one place
and be disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower
must not be used to excess. Because the disposal of dead bodies is a
troublesome task, they should be gathered into houses which are
scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into
the river.”
Some elderly Japanese men who participated in these atrocities 70
years ago are now starting to talk publicly about this. They say that
they did not reveal this sooner because they did not want to embarrass
their own families. Now that their family members are all dead, they
can talk about this for the first time.
The real cover-up going on now is about what happened to Iris Chang
herself. One reprint of this book states simply “[Iris Chang] passed
away in 2004”. An event such as putting a gun into your own mouth and
blowing your own brains out is not generally described as “passing
away”.
Iris Chang was born in Princeton New Jersey on March 28, 1968. Both of
her parents were university professors who had immigrated from China.
She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1989 and worked for
the New York Times, the Chicago Herald Tribune and the Associated
Press before starting on a career of writing books.
Her first book was about a Chinese-American scientist who was one of
the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California
Institute of Technology. During the McCarthy Era, he was suddenly
accused of being a Communist spy and was placed under house arrest for
five years. When he was released, he had lost his security clearance
and could no longer work, so he went to China and founded another jet
propulsion laboratory there. This of course became one of the
stupidest episodes in the history of the USA securities services.
Her second book was this book about the Rape of Nanjing. This book
made her famous, a celebrity. However, due to the nature of this book,
it also subjected her to criticism. It made her known as one of the
major advocates of a Congressional resolution to urge the Japanese
government to apologize for war crimes. She met with First Lady
Hillary Clinton in 1999 to discuss this issue. The Times of London
reported:
“She confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on
television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with
his mere acknowledgment "that really unfortunate things happened, acts
of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". "It
is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such
expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her
reaction.
Her third book, The Chinese in America was not as successful. As a
history book it was a good book, but it carried too much self-pity.
All immigrant groups have experienced a hard time upon first reaching
America and the Chinese could not have expected an easier time than
the others had.
It seems that the lack of success of her third book, in that it was
less successful than her second book, was upsetting to her. Her
suicide notes indicate this. She was working on a fourth book, this
one about the Bataan Death March, when she committed suicide.
Nobody can ever say why anybody commits suicide. Iris Chang was no
doubt deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research
into the Rapes of Nanjing, but this should not have caused her to kill
herself. Rather, this should have given her a reason to live. Probably
almost everybody thinks about suicide an some point in their life.
Fortunately, only a small percentage of us actually carry it out.
Suicide was not just a passing thought, as the evidence shows that
Iris Chang had been thinking of suicide for quite some time. She had
everything to live for. She was a beautiful woman, a famous person,
with millions of readers and fans, with no serious financial worries
and with a devoted and concerned family. Yet such factors often do not
stop someone from taking their own life.
Iris Chang suffered a nervous breakdown because of working too hard by
touring America giving speeches and interviews promoting her books
while also working on her next book about the Bataan Death March. In
August, 2004, a man who was assisting her research helped her check
into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, where she
was placed on medication for three days and then released to her
parents.
Three months later, on November 9, 2004, she was found dead in her car
near her home in San Jose, California. At about 9:00 AM, Iris Chang
was found dead in her car on a rural road south of Los Gatos,
California and west of State Route 17 in Santa Clara County.
Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth
with revolver.
It was discovered that she had left behind three suicide notes, each
dated November 8, 2004. The first, the "Statement of Iris Chang",
said:
I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. I will
stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. I will follow the
doctor's orders for medications. I promise not to hurt myself. I
promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide.
The next note was a draft of the third:
When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations
and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the
minute. It is far better that you remember me as I was — in my heyday
as a best-selling author — than the wild-eyed wreck who returned from
Louisville... Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take — the
anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. I know that my
actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who
love me the most. Please forgive me. Forgive me because I cannot
forgive myself.
The third note included:
There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never
understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about
this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being
recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could
have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I
will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop
hounding me.
Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my
safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling
that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside
my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention
at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me.
I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from
myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to
withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.
Needless to say, the suggestions in her notes that the government, the
CIA and the mental hospital in Louisville are all engaged in some sort
of conspiracy to discredit her and will never stop hounding her are
signs of emotional disturbance. Nobody can be blamed for this. Nobody
can say that something could have or should have been differently done
to prevent this tragedy from occurring.
Sam Sloan
San Rafael California
USA
June 14, 2012
http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871872181
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871872181