Abstract: Ying-Ying Chang, mother of late American writer Iris Chang, describes her experience of writing a memoir of her beloved daughter Iris Chang. The memoir entitled “The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond The Rape of Nanking” was published in 2011. Iris Chang gained attention for her book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII which became an international best seller since it was first published in 1997.  The book “The Rape of Nanking” had a big impact on the western world and brought to light many of the war crimes that imperial Japan committed during its invasion of China in the 1930s. Iris then went further on to write on behalf of those voiceless victims and courageously preserved the historical truth and justice. Unfortunately, Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004. Ying-Ying described her daughter’s life of 36 years in details using many her inspirational letters and emails to her parents.

Key words:  Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, memoir

Ying-Ying Chang was born in China's wartime capital, Chungking, in 1940 and moved to Taiwan with her parents during the 1949 civil war. She graduated from National Taiwan University in 1962 and came to the U.S. for graduate studies. She received her Ph. D. in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University in 1967. She married Dr. Shau-Jin Chang, a Harvard physicist in 1964.

In 1969, after two years post-doctoral work at Princeton University, Ying-Ying and her husband started a teaching and research career spanning for more than three decades at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana with Ying-Ying in the Department of Microbiology and Shau-Jin in Department of Physics. In 2002, they moved to San Jose, California after retiring from the University.

Their first child, the late celebrity author Iris Chang, was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1968. In 1997, Iris published her best known international bestseller The Rape of Nanking, The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.

After Iris' untimely death in 2004, Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin have channeled their energy into the preservation of the history of World War II in Asia. They co-founded the Iris Chang Memorial Fund in 2006 to honor their beloved daughter.