Remembering Iris Chang: The Chinese American Writer Who Unveiled the Nanjing Massacre

On December 13, China observes its National Memorial Day for the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre. Established in 2014, it’s a solemn state commemoration to confront the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937. Even today, new evidence continues to surface through personal donations, survivor testimonies, and ongoing scholarly research.

However, the horrific event remained largely unknown or overlooked in the international community. That began to change with Chinese American writer Iris Chang’s groundbreaking 1997 work, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, which brought the crime to global attention.