Iris Chang's parents, Ying-Ying and
Shau-Jin Chang, presented these two volumes to Uni High on Oct. 13.

URBANA — Shau-Jin and Ying-Ying Chang, parents of the late Iris Chang, visited Uni High on Oct. 13 to present the school with two books of essays written in honor of their daughter.

The volumes consist of the best submissions from the first two years of the Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest.

The best writings from the 2006 competition are collected in "Iris Chang and the Forgotten Holocaust."

The top essays from 2007 are found in "The Denial and Its Cost: Reflections on Nanking Massacre 70 Years Ago and Beyond."

The 2007 volume features an essay by current Uni junior Daniel J. Pearlstein, who was a co-recipient of the Iris Chang Youth Award, given to the top writers of high school age.

Pearlstein's contribution is titled "Japanese Denial of Responsibility for War Crimes: Historical Background and Continuing Implications."

The Changs presented the volumes to Director Steve Epperson, librarian Frances Harris, and English teacher Adele Suslick, whose instruction and encouragement Iris cited as important factors in her development as a writer.

Iris, a 1985 Uni graduate, was a best-selling nonfiction author whose 1997 book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," brought worldwide attention to the wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese when they occupied the Chinese city in 1937.

Her parents, retired University of Illinois scientists now living in California, established the Iris Chang Memorial Fund in memory of their daughter, who died on Nov. 9, 2004, at the age of 36.

With the help of friends and the board members of the Global Alliance for the Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, the Changs established the fund on Iris's 38th birthday, March 28, 2006.

The organization's first project was an international essay contest based on Iris's belief in the need to remember history and her passion to seek truth and defend human rights. The essay contest was held in 2006 and 2007, then went into recess for 2008. The contest is scheduled to resume in 2009.

The 2006 topic was, "How has Iris Chang's book, 'The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust,' affected my life and thinking?"

In 2007, participants were asked to reflect on such questions as:

How has Japan been able to escape responsibility for its horrific war crimes committed against its Asian neighbors for so long? How can Japan regain the trust and respect of its neighbors who were brutally victimized during World War II? What can one do to heighten awareness of the Japanese atrocities committed in Asia during the Pacific War? How has the world learned from man's inhumanity against man and how has it been affected by the aggressor's postwar denial? And what can one do to help bring this tragic chapter of history to a proper closure?

Besides her groundbreaking book on the Nanking atrocities, Iris wrote two other works of history: "The Thread of the Silkworm," the story of scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, who became the father of the Chinese missile program, and "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History." At the time of her death, she was researching a fourth book, on the Bataan Death March.

Iris came back to Uni in 1998 to receive the school's highest honor for a graduate, the University High School Max Beberman Distinguished Alumni Award.

After her death, Daniel Kolodziej, who co-edited the Unique literary magazine with Iris, established the Iris Chang and Peter Kolodziej Writing Awards in 2006, honoring both Chang and Daniel's older brother, Peter (Uni '79), a Vanderbilt University scientist who died in 2005.

The fourth annual Iris Chang and Peter Kolodziej writing contest, open to all Uni students, will be held in the spring.

Chang's parents, meanwhile, remain committed to helping others continue in Iris's path as a seeker of truth and defender of human rights.

"Our Iris Chang is gone, but it's our belief that many Iris Changs are out there and many more yet to become," Mrs. Chang wrote in Asian Week in 2006. "It is the mission of the Iris Chang Memorial Fund to educate, to discover the voices of the next generation and to preserve her life legacy."