After publishing the book, Chang received hate mail, primarily from Japanese ultranationalists,[5] and threatening notes on her car and also believed her phone was tapped. Her mother said the book "made Iris sad". Suffering from depression, Chang was diagnosed with brief reactive psychosis in August 2004. She began taking medications to stabilize her mood.[5] She wrote:
I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.[5]
Chang committed suicide on November 9, 2004.[5] A memorial service was held in China by Nanjing Massacre survivors coinciding with her funeral in Los Altos, California. The Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre, a memorial site in Nanjing built to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre,[52] added a wing dedicated to her in 2005.[53]
In the US, a Chinese garden in Norfolk, Virginia, which contains a memorial to Minnie Vautrin, added a memorial dedicated to Chang, including her as the latest victim of the Nanjing Massacre, and drawing parallels between Chang and Vautrin, who also took her own life.[53] Vautrin exhausted herself trying to protect women and children during the Nanjing Massacre and subsequently during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940. She returned to the US for medical treatment, committing suicide a year later.[19]
