Farewell to Iris Chang
November 26, 2004
The strains of “Amazing Grace” had followed the hearse as more than 500 people walked to the Los Altos gravesite where author James Bradley, attired in a black Mandarin Chinese jacket, exhorted mourners to yell out a final “Good Bye, Iris.” The crowd responded. As one mourner began to sing “America the Beautiful,” fans and friends joined in. Then they followed Bradley’s gesture and peeled off flowers into the final resting place of author Iris Chang last Friday at Gate of Heaven Cemetery Chapel.
Her husband, Brett Douglas, had told AsianWeek days before the funeral that his “beloved wife” had left a farewell message by her computer. He hoped that people would remember her as she wished, “as the woman she was before her illness, engaged with life, committed to her causes, her writing and her family.”
Chang, the renowned 36-year-old author and a mother, had taken her own life earlier this month while working on a fourth book. She had written The Rape of Nanking as well as Thread of a Silkworm and The Chinese in America.
Among the mourners were Susan Rabiner, Chang’s literary agent and former editor; author Helen Zia; Committee of 100 president Bob Lee and treasurer Dennis Wu; and former classmates and friends. Chang’s father, mother and brother spoke.
Best-selling author Bradley, in closing remarks, delivered a message to Chang’s 2-year-old son, Christopher, telling him about his mother’s accomplishments and how she inspired him to make a success of Flags of Our Fathers and to write his best seller Fly Boys.
Bradley, who has set up a journalism scholarship in Chang’s name, said that one day he wants her son to help pick the winners.
Rabiner, who had shared many touching moments of them working together, read a number of e-mails that she had received from devastated fans. Rabiner said that she had spoken to Chang only hours before she took her own life.
Sam Chu Lin of AsianWeek told the audience that Chang is now officially remembered in American and world history.
Lin noted that he had spoken early that morning to Rep. Michael Honda, a leader in demanding reparations and accountability for the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan in World War II. From Washington, D.C., the congressman was so moved by Chang’s passing that he stood before the House of Representatives on Nov. 17 to deliver a tribute to her, now memorialized in the Congressional Record.
“Certainly, the millions of people whom she touched through her writings and her activism will not forget the moral vision she brought on past injustices to the international community and … [to] promoting peace between peoples of differing races and backgrounds,” said Honda in his tribute. (A full text of his tribute is on page 6 of AsianWeek.)
On Thursday night during the visitation, Chang was displayed in an open casket at the Los Altos mortuary where hundreds passed by candle-illuminated pictures of her and expressed their condolences to her family. Chang’s colleagues will be conducting a search for a writer to turn a legacy of research into her final about American soldiers fighting Imperial Japan in the Philippines during World War II.
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