>> one thing they've done over the years, told so many half truths and lies they will have omitted a lot of information to the media, and now if they were to sit down with me face to f e face, i could show them with their own documents and counter what they've been saying, and they don't want to do that. >> more with jerry ensminger and rachel libert sunday night on c-span's "q&a." history book shelf features popular american history writers of the past decade and american history tv, airs saturday at noon eastern. this weekend on history book shelf, iris chang discusses her book the chinese in america. a native histo narrative histor.

from the building of the transcons nen railroad to modern contributions in missile defense and silicon valley high-tech inventions. iris chang committed suicide in november 2004. next is a brief interview about her life with author paula kamen. a former colleague and friend of chang's. paula kamen? >> iris chang known for the best sir "the rape of nanking" and it did huge things to raise awareness about japanese atrocities during world war ii. that was, not only in nanking, but she wrote specifically in great detail about the mass dhaer raised awareness about atrocities throughout asia. so it became a whole movement rather than just a book in the late '90s. >> was she a historian?

>> and a journalist. she didn't see them as mutually exclusive. where she was good, the historians, a big tool of hers was archives. she spent days buried in the national archives and other archives but also went out, confronted people face to face. she used all those methods. >> where was she from? >> from urbana, illinois. we met in college at university of illinois in the mid-80s an were friends since then. >> what kind of relationship did you have as friends? >> at first i didn't know what to make of her. she was many steps ahead of me. few internships, every time there was one, she would get it, before i even thought of applying to it, she would have already gotten it. that's how -- so far ahead of us, and she actually had the idea to write for the "new york times," as a correspondent, called them up and soon she had

stories in the front section of the "new york times." we're thinking, who does that? you know? what to make of her, but then i saw -- i was her editor there and i saw what real talent backed up this incredible nerve, and i decided to emulate her instead of seeing her as a rival. and through the years both of us wrote books, and we were both sounding boards, and she became a huge role model of what it meant to be a successful author. >> what happened to her? >> this is the reason i wrote the book. one of the most shocking things that -- i never experienced, that she experienced suicide, which seemed for no apparent reason in 2004, when she was 36 years old. there were lots of rumors swirling everywhere. that the -- the right wing japanese had assassinated her. she had a lot of enemies. >> because of her book?

"the rape of nanking." >> yes, and very vocal criticizing their history book and their political leaders. also rumors that the u.s. was somehow behind it. that she was very active in trying to get veterans of the baton death march to sue japan for their enslavement, and the state department wasn't so happy about that, but it turned out that she fit -- that she fit a lot of patterns of -- of manic depressive illness, or -- or bipolar disorder that got worse after she had her son. which often happens with women. and was exacerbated by a lot of -- a lot of real pressures all around her. >> what was your last conversation with letter? >> she called me just -- just three days before she killed herself, and that was the first time i of said something was very seriously wrong. i realize now it was a good-bye call.

then it just seemed like a strange, you know, desire -- desired thing. i didn't know what to make of it. but that was the first time i had of noticed her as really depresses and disconnected from reality. so depressed it was lard to get t hard to get the words out and in retrospect, why she was about to do this. a lot of guilt. the way she had raised her son. she talked about a lot of fears that she had. and -- and said i had been a good friend to her, and, yeah. it was -- it was very, very disturbing, but disturbing as it was, i didn't think that he life would end a few days later. >> so what did you find about iris chang? >> that she was very, very complex. that there was a lot behind this veneer of perfection all of us basically saw her as having the

absolute perfect life and being the perfect person, to the extent we didn't even want to share our problems with her, that she wouldn't understand having problems, what that was like. that she was incredibly -- incredibly driven. that's what helped her to uncover all these really tough parts of history, and atrocities in japan. i think with the mental illness, she didn't know when to stop and didn't know about any kind of limits that she had. so she was an inspiration in her drive, not seeing limits, then ultimately it was a weakness, and not getting treated for the mental illness, you know, she refused to accept that she had it. >> is there a -- is there a stigmatism with mental illness and asian-americans? >> yeah. every culture, there's a huge thing. but then an asian culture, it's really, really extreme. that asians are much less likely to get treated with therapy or medication.

when they do go for treatment, it's usually at the 11th hour, and when they're already at the psychotic stage, when it's really hard to reverse what's happened. so that's what happened with iris. she didn't get treatment, didn't see a psychiatrist until two weeks before her death, that was because her family forced her and she wasn't compliant with him what he was telling her to do. >> what changes have you made in your life because of iris chang's suicide? >> oh, that's -- no one's of asked me that before. i -- i -- i'd appreciate living in, a lot of -- corny. appreciate living in the moment. i'm having my second child in a few -- in several months, and just -- just -- looking a lot towards the lighter things in life, and enjoying them. i'm going to return to writing about tough topics, but -- but just to know my limits and it's

okay to take time off, and -- and not be so driven, you know, every second of the day. >> besides this book what other books have you written? >> i've written three other books. the one before this was "all in my head" about an 18-year migraine, and i blogged about, in the "new york times."com. about a year ago. and all of that is about women in chronic pain. how it's been seen as all in our heads, and more recent research showing it as neurological. and i wrote two feminist books. when i was 24 called "feminist fattal" known as like the first, the first postboomer feminist book and one that was related to that called "her way." about young women's sexual attitudes, having more status and education in society, how it's affected their personal lives. >> well, we've been talking with author paula kamen about her book "finding iris chang."

i'm going to spend the first part of the hour talking about the chinese in america, a narrative history and then devote the rest of my time answering questions from the audience. let me first tell you a little about myself and why i wrote this book. for as long as i could remember, i lived in two separate realities as a chinese american. the reality of popular culture and the repeaty of my own personal experience. popular culture told me that chinese-americans were hopelessly foreign, exotic and ex-krutable. they were fu manchu, charlie chan and suzy wong. those buck-toothed cartoon figures with pigtails or lamp shade hats on saturday morning tv. they were those seven chinese brothers from the popular children's book who could withstand fire and suffocation and swallow the sea in one gulp.

they were obviously not american, and perhaps not even human. but then there was the other reality i knew. as the daughter of two professors in the university town of champaign urbana, illinois. immigra immigrant scholars from across the globe, india, china, europe and the middle east would converge on this middle western community where they celebrated ethnicity with campus sponsored festivals and parties while also working together to research important intellectual topics. my high school was like a mini united nations, in its racial diversity, and many of my chasemates came from or later engaged in interracial marriage, as i would when i reached adulthood. so during the most formative years of my life, i grew up with the perception that while mass american entertainment might be biased, in real life, people were cherish their cultural

heritage while also befriending each other and marrying each other across line, across color lines, because that's what i saw and experienced every day. and i believed as many people did that anti-asian racism might one day become a relic of the past. all throughout the 1980s the major news media carried optimistic stories about chinese-americans winning nobel prizes and flooding the best universities in the country, and acing the westinghouse and national merit scholarship competitions. the chinese were called the modern minorities. the model minorities. moving onward and upward at an incredible pace. but all of this would change by the late 1990s. and for the very first time in my life i saw the reality of popular culture collide with the reality of my personal experience, which destroyed lives in the process. the class clash of the soviet empire made china the second

biggest superpower and hence the prime role for america's new enemy. a "time" magazine cover story implied a new cold war with china was on the horizon. and a deeply flawed report released by the special committee under congressman christopher cox suggested that the prc had been stealing nuclear secrets from the u.s. for decades. and the result was a major anti-chinese backlash from the u.s. especially in the national laboratories. the most visible victim of this was wen ho lee, a taiwanese-american scientist who was accused of passing design secrets of the w-88 warhead to mainland china. after he was fired without a hearing, and held in dreadful conditions in prison, the u.s. had to admit later that it had no evidence that lee committed espionage and also revealed the embarrassing fact that the w-88 technology china had could not have come from los alamos.

during the lee controversy, chinese-american scientist whose had devoted their lives to strengthening american defense with their technological research were being interrogated as if they were spies for the grc and for many people of my parents' generation, this was entirely new and unexpected. previously, the worst racist episodes against the chinese seemed to come from mainly blue collar and poor areas such as the vincent chin cases of killed in the streets after confrontations with whites in a strip club or pool hall. now seeing an attack by highly sophisticated government agencies against a highly sophisticated strata of chinese-american society. their scientists, their engineers, their high-tech professionals. for chinese intellectuals who had always been supported by the u.s. government in scholarships, in salaries and research grants, for those chinese who had spent their professional lives

nurtured by our universities and national laboratories, this was a very frightening development. and it would only get worse. the anti-chinese backlash climaxed in april, 2001, when american navy spy plane on a u.s. surveillance mission collided with a chinese fighter jet over the south chinese sea. the chinese pilot was killed, and the chinese government detained 24 american crew members of the spythey made an in china's highen island. unfortunately, after 11 tense days of negotiations and a carefully worded apology from the united states, the prc did release the crew but not before the chinese-american population had endured ugly and racist stereotyping. you should have heard their hatred that came over the airwaves. talk show hosts wanted chinese employees fired from the national laboratories, or expelled from the u.s., or even

imprisoned. as japanese-americans were during world war ii. in springfield, illinois, two radio deejays urged the boycott of all chinese-american restaurants, and suggested that all chinese-americans be shipped out of the country, and even telephone people with chinese last names to harass them. even newspaper editors indulged in stereotypes during the spy plane crisis. in april 2001, amy lee yang, a chinese-american college senior was in turning at a publication of the american society of newspaper editors. the society organized national convention in washington, d.c. and leeang was assigned to photograph the performance of the comedy troupe during the opening reception. the troupe put on skit about u.s.-chinese relations and i would like to read verbatim her description of the event. >> white males impersonate add

chinese official and his translator. the official sported a black wig and thick glasses and spoke fake chinese. ching, ching, chong, chong, the man shouted as he gestured wildly. what was disturbing was not just the fact that this was happening, but that hundreds of editors, my future bosses, were laughing. i felt myself swallowed by all the loud laughter. every time the chinese voice became more jarring, the editors would laugh even harder. despite feeling humiliated, i finished the job and turned in my picture. the next morning i woke up crying. those are amy leeang's words and the skit merely reflected the popular mood of the times. a year 2001 gallup poll found more than 80% of americans viewed the prc as dangerous. in another poll, a national telephone survey commissioned by the committee of 100 and the anti-defamation league found that close to half of the people

polled thought that chinese-americans were, that -- were passing secrets to the chinese government or that they might be doing it, and that was a problem. almost one-third believed that chinese-americans were more loyal to the prc than to the u.s. but then something even more unexpected happened. the terrorist attacks of 9/11. like other americans, i watched with horror the footage of the high jacketed planes crashing into the twin towers of the world trade center, and then just as quickly as the anti-chinese backlash had arrived, it vanished. suddenly, middle eastern immigrants were the new pariahs of american society. and so as i wrote the chinese in america, i tackled a number of provocative questions that are central not only to the chinese-american experience, but the entire american immigrant experience. such as, how can an ethnic group that is embraced by america and

celebrated for its hard work and achievement suddenly find itself vilified? why does it happen? how frequently does this happen in american society? and how can we stop it from happening again? when you read my book, you'll see how the united states, a country that prize itself as a bastion of fair play and justice, once shut the chinese utd from the gates of immigration and the law, and even turned a blind eye to the wholesale slaughter of chinese-americans across the american west for more than a century ago. there's a perception out there that the chinese in america started out poor and down trodden, at the bottom of society only to rise steadily to the top. but the reality is that the chinese like other ethnic groups endured cycles of acceptance and abuse. wild swings between xenophobia and tolerance, and at certain times in history, they were praised and celebrated as honorary whites. while at other times, they were

loathed and even killed. their fate oscillated with factors beyond their control, such as economic and political conditions and the state of american diplomatic relations with china. if i may summarize these cycles briefly, we could look at the history of the chinese in america as the story of three major immigrant waves of the last 150 years. each of which experienced great extremes of success and mistreatment. the first wave of chinese mostly men came in the mid-19th century. the majority to join the california gold rush, other others migrated directly from two other regions. they were warmly welcomed when they first arrived because the u.s. needed their labor, especially during the civil war. and as they filled this labor shortage, the chinese made huge unheralded contributions to this country such as building the transcons nen railroad, transforming the western frontier into land for

agriculture. and they also labored in factories and canneries during the american industrial revolution. but the chinese also face add backlash especially in california. white americans began to view them as problem as the chinese population grew. in particular, during the economic depression of the 1870s when white workers found it hard to compete effectively with chinese capitalist and wage earners. in desperation, white workers organized among themself politically against chinese immigrants, and the ethnic chinese soon found themselves demonized in the media. the subject of racist state legislation, and also forced to pay more taxes and license fees than any other group in california while also not being permitteded to vote or use many government services sustained by their taxes. they could not testify against whites, or work for a public corporation, and their children were the only group to be denied a state-funded education.

and matters would only grow worse when the chinese actually found themselves peoplenized all t demonized all the more, a crucial swing state during president's elections. adopting anti-chinese platforms to court california. in washington, officials found it convenient to blame the nation's ills on the chinese rather than to have the public scrutinize their own corruption and their own acceptance of bribes and their collusion with big industry which was rampant at the time. and so in 1882, congress passed the chinese exclusion act which would shut the gates of immigration to chinese labor for the next 60 years. other laws passed over the next few decades would lock the chinese out of the country when they were visiting china, even if they had property and families in the u.s. they would force them to register with the government for residential certificates, and

even deprive them of the protection of the courts and bail and habeas corpus cases an threaten even privileges associated with birthright citizenship. anti-chinese riots and massacres would drive many of the chinese out of small towns and cities across the american west. and thousands left for china never to return. the remaining chinese faced government harassment and repeated assaults against their civil liberties. such as arrests in the middle of the night. interrogation by immigration authorities, demands for bribes by corrupt official, and threats of deprecation to china. and as they would discover, all it would take was one crime by one chinese plan to put the entire chinese population under siege. when a young white girl named elsy siegal was apparently murdered by her chinese boyfriend in new york city, the police forbade any chinese person to leave the city without

permission, and across the country the chinese were arrested sblim knitly when he stepped off trains or tried to buy steam ship tickets. during their search for the killer, the police in providence, rhode island, even forced all chinese restaurants to remove the drapes from every room, stall and booth, so the interior could be viewed from the outside at all times. this case showed just how quickly the constitutional rights of the chinese could be suspended in an instant during a time of government declared emergency. and the cycle of acceptance and abuse would be repeated for the chinese in the 20th century during the second major wave of their immigration. the doors to chinese immigration opened up again after the repeal of the exclusion laws following the japanese attack on pearl harbor, which led people in the u.s. to see the chinese and by extension the chinese-americans, as the good guys during this signo american wartime reliance.

also, new legislation during the 1960s swept away the racist immigration quotas against asian countries. now, this second wave consisted largely of students and highly educated professionals, representing one of the greatest brain drain waves of chinese immigrant talent to the united states. many were intellectuals, capitalists or bureaucrat whose held prominent positions in the nagsist regime and asked to leave shortly before the take joevg in 1949. a few people went directly to the united states immediately during the communist revolution, but many more fled to hong kong or taiwan before later migrating to america to study or to start new careers there. some were college students or graduate students who during the chinese civil war were stranded in the u.s. without a country to return to, and they decided to stay. but largescale immigration from

mainland china itself seized when the prc isolated itself from the world community during the mass doan years, and just like this first wave, the second wave was warmly welcomed, at first. the chinese came at a time when the united states needed and actively sought immigrant brain power as they entered the arms race against the soviet union. the u.s. federal government poured billions of dollars into research, into our national laboratories and universities, especially after the russian launch of sputnik made americans believe they were lagging behind in science and technology. so these new chinese entered our universities, our corporations and our defense laboratories designing some of america's earliest rockets, developing powerful drugs and medicines and fueling the high-tech and scientific revolution. in silicon valley and elsewhere, their contributions would help

establish and maintain u.s. supremacy in the information age. and some became extraordinarily successful, as you know, as nobel laureates and ceos and pioneers in their fields. but it wasn't always smooth sailing for this group. when the korean war broke out, and when american troops clashed with communist chinese forces and when reports surfaced of white soldiers being slaughtered, imprisoned or tortures in p.o.w. camps, the chinese in america were quickly considered the bad guys, as the japanese-americans had ban few years earlier, and reports began to surface of ethnic chinese being physically attacked and their property vandalized, and the chinese-american whose were suspected of being communist sympathizers found their mail opened and their phone lines tapped and movements shadowed in the streets by government acts. the u.s. government even

considered proposals to incarcerate the chinese in concentration camps and allocated money to set up detection centers. detention centers. one person whose career was destroyed was a visionary cal tech professor of aeronautics and the subject ofit book "thread of the silkworm." during world war ii, the doctorate work and secret military projects resulting in the production of some of america's first military missiles, and he was also one of the founders of jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena. but during the mccarthy years he was falsely accused of being a communist and possibly a spy, mainly because some of his friends at cal tech had belonged to a secret socialist club during the 1930s. and unfortunately for him, this accusation came when the united states was entering weren't of its most paranoid eras in

history. china had fallen to the communist. the russians successfully detonated their first nuclear bomb and the evidence suggested that there was a british and american spy ring that had helped pass some of the atomic secrets to the russians. and the u.s. government and the public began to suspect that the whole country was infested with spies. and so after five years of investigation and virtual house arrests in pasadena, during which time the u.s. government did not find one scrap of real evidence that he was either a spy or a communist, the doctor was deported to china against his will. as part of a secret government swap between the prc and the u.s. for american pilots shot down by the people's republic during the korean war. and ironically, after being forced to return to china, he revolutionized the chinese ballistic missile program, and also helped initiate of design

of the silkworm missile used against the american armed forces during the first persian gulf war. so all of this suggest stos me that many of these obsessive measures to promote security tend to produce the opposite effect. history would repeat itself once again during the third wave of chinese immigration. which occurred after the u.s. resumed diplomatic relations with the prc. business boomed in china, and tens of thousands of chinese scholars as well as people from all socioeconomic classes came to the united states. however, as i discussed before, the disintegration of the soviet empire and the rise of china as the world's second major superpower raised concerns amongst some groups that china would soon rival the united states. and it's interesting to note that during this time, new legislation was passed to make it very difficult for many chinese immigrants and