I own her book. I found it remarkable, turning a clinical eye on an episode of WW II that has conveniently been swept under the rug. Contrast it with the item posted yesterday on FR that the Polish government was opening a formal investigation into the Katyn forrest massacre. FWIW, it's possible that her uderlying depresion, which had to have existed for a long while, was "stressed" by the research she did for the book. Wading through all the pics, and the archives, and the reports, it had to increase whatever pain she was feeling. I have no training in mental illness, but I have read that many young mothers who are suicidal will often kill their children before themselves. Sounds like she tried to keep herself away from her infant, fortunately.
I had the same thought. It was very difficult research and probably hard to do. Her parents generation grew up not wanting to talk about it, alluding to it vaguely. I'm sure she had to dig to find what she did. And I think that would be difficult for the hardiest of us.
Some days after her death (it must have been the Nov. 20/21 weekend) C-SPAN rebroadcast an interview of Iris Chang by Brian Lamb, originally broadcast on 11/17/1997. It was an excellent interview but hard to watch knowing she was dead so young and unnecessarily. She said that 300,000 Chinese had died in a 6-8 week period in Nanking and that 19 million Chinese perished in the war, but that the Japanese people are still "in denial."
Chang's book is banned in Japan.