9th posted M. Cendrars piece, 11/9 date
When Hillary Clinton Met Iris Chang: One Memory on the Anniversary of Her Suicide
by Marcelle Cendrars

“Over a six-week period, up to 80,000 women were raped. But it wasn’t so much the sheer numbers as the details that shock — fathers forced at gunpoint to rape daughters, stakes driven through vaginas, women nailed to trees, tied-up prisoners used for bayonet practice, breasts sliced off the living, speed decapitation contests. 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers tortured and murdered –a death toll exceeding that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki– but babies, infants were halved and quartered in morbid games.” — A partial transcription of Iris’ approximate words to Hillary Clinton on April 22, 1999.

Iris Chang was THE major advocate of a Congressional Resolution proposed in 1997 to have the Japanese government apologize for war crimes. She had written The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, and it had had quite an impact.

On April 22, 1999 –ten days prior to President Clinton’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi– she met with First Lady Hillary to discuss the issue privately. Although the White House had summoned Iris to appear, she was allowed only fifteen minutes alone with The Jilted One.

Julie Mason, a spokesperson for the First Lady, announced that Hillary told Iris that she was “unfamiliar with the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war.” And HC asked IC to “send more follow-up materials” so that she would be able “to study ways to become involved.”

Excuse me, but that’s like being granted a meeting with James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck and 1st Baronet (in 1791, following the publication of Life of Johnson), having him travel the length of the British Isles four times over to rendezvous with you, and then requesting that the two of you “do lunch” at some indeterminate time in the future…so as to be supportive in some vague way…maybe…about an issue of monumental importance. Like whether or not Samuel Johnson’s works would ever be published again, whether or not he’d be remembered in the future.

It’s actually much worse than that silly scenario, of course, on several counts. Not the least of which is that Iris had to eventually confront the Japanese Ambassador to the United States without Hillary’s hilarious “support.”

On television, quite alone, Iris, according to the Times of London:

“demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with his mere acknowledgement ‘that really unfortunate things happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military’. ‘It is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated,’ was her reaction.”

Iris shot herself –all alone then too– in isolated woods, not far from lots of activity, promises, and feigned interest…near a city of major influence in Northern California.

Iris Chang was a compassionate, hardworking genius who was drained to death by drug companies and doctors’ misguided prescriptions. And by disappointment.

I can remember when Hillary supported the Armenian Genocide Resolution …opportunistically. In the late 90s, it just wasn’t Iris’ time, I guess.

November 9th, 2004 wasn’t either.

Marcelle Cendrars, Algerian-American activist, was honored to know Iris Chang personally, and would be happy to recommend reading material related to her, upon request. She can be reached at bcendra [AT]  yahoo.  com.