iris. i became friends with her mother and father. mrs. chang is a wonderful woman. she believes there is a reason that i read this obituary and said that iris had always wanted to make a high-quality film because you cannot tell this story just in print and in the black-and-white photographs. i did not know. -- do not know. i don't think there's anything positive when an army invades and occupies a city and basically takes hostage young men and women. and the japanese were using china as a launching pad for world war ii. there was a deep distrust between the chinese and japanese. nanking was the capital of china at the time. ironically, that city fell. it was very embarrassing to the chinese. in fact when the people's army was created afterwards, china -- one of the reasons china is such a strong singular nation is because of what happened then. there was a kind of vow. why would we ever let a smaller nation like japan come in and overrun and occupy our country? they look at the rape of nanking the way that israel looks at the holocaust, never again, and they fortifi

and so i understand what happened to poor iris chang. she broke the news with this book and she was ridiculed mercilessly -- that picture that you say happen on this day in this city, it could not been in november because look at the way the sun is setting, so if this picture is dated wrong, that must mean the rest of your book must be wrong. she took it personally that she was on trial in this court of public opinion. >> her suicide -- talking to her parents, was there any evidence that she had depression before this started? >> i do believe that she had some depression. if you are all around this subject matter for enough, you can see how it would really add to a darkness that would set in, because it was a horrible part of life. my movie tried to show that even in the darkest times, there is light. even in the most gruesome times and the westerners who stayed behind were great heroes as well as many of the chinese to stay behind and banded together. that is what is at the heart of my book. being part of the community, finding a higher