It’s the birthday of historian and journalist Iris Chang (1968-2004), best known as the author of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), an account that threw international attention on a massacre that had been largely ignored for decades. Chang’s grandparents had escaped Nanking before the massacre, so Chang grew up hearing about it but realized very little had been written on the subject.

Chang was born to immigrant parents in Princeton, New Jersey, and grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Her parents both taught at the University of Illinois, and Chang got her bachelor’s in journalism there in 1989 and a master’s from Johns Hopkins University two years later. Her first book, Thread of the Silkworm, came out in 1995 and described how the brilliant Chinese rocket scientist and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen was deported during the hysteria of the McCarthy era and returned to China to lead *their* rocketry program. (Thanks for that, F.B.I. Brilliant move.)

For her second book, The Rape of Nanking, Chang did extensive research in China and interviewed survivors. She uncovered and wrote about atrocities so unspeakable “that even Nazis in [Nanking] were horrified.” While carrying out her research, she discovered the diary of a Nazi living in Nanking who helped save many civilians—so, kudos to you, Nazi Guy! (There’s a sentence I didn’t expect to be writing today. Or ever.) The book became a bestseller, though not so much in Japan, where conservatives were—let’s just say it—more than miffed. Chang then led the international community in demanding that Japan formally apologize to its Chinese victims and attempt reparation, something that Chang felt never fully occurred.

Chang’s third book, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (2003), dealt with the outsider status of Chinese Americans. Chang was researching a fourth book on another cheerful subject—American soldiers on the Baatan peninsula pre-WWII, some of whom were captured by the Japanese—when she had a breakdown and became extremely depressed. She was treated and released but the depression continued, and on November 9, 2004, Chang shot herself in her car near Los Gatos, California, leaving behind a husband, a son, and several family members.

A museum dedicated to honoring Chang and her work opened in 2017 in Chang’s ancestral home, Huaian, Jiangsu province, according to the South China Morning Post (June 1, 2017).

Have a good healthy Wednesday, apologize as necessary, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.