The author of "Rape of Nanking" is dead of apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Ms. Chang,

I'd been meaning to write to you for several years now, but always put it off because I didn't think it would mean much to you.

But I just found out that you were dead, by your own hands.

This mail will probably not be read by anyone, but I am going to believe what tradition has taught me -- that you will be around for a few more days.

I wanted to say, thank you. But more than that, I wanted to say I was, am, and always will be, sorry. I am Japanese, and I am sorry for what we did in China.

My mother was the one who told us about the Rape of Nanking, and all the other war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. She is probably not unlike you -- understanding history is a passion and a profound responsibility for her. She taught me well, and through it came another lesson: that truth is not always welcome. Other Japanese people in ignorance and denial of the past, Europeans and Americans bent on seeing Japan as a victim -- over the 30 years of my life so far, I've been in a fight with a lot of people, including a scuffle with right-wing thugs blaring propaganda in central Tokyo.

But you went into the heart of the darkness, and did what so badly needed to be done. Now, there is a definitive record, not just stories handed down from mothers to daughters both Chinese and Japanese.

To sift through all those horrors must have cost you. To avenge the ghosts of tens of millions, and be faced with the same bored obfuscations, the same shameless waiting game. "The Japanese government is waiting for everyone who remembers to die," my mother explained to me when I asked why there was no apology, no compensation, no remorse. I am heartsick at the thought that this may in part be what drove you to despair.

As long as Japan as a country refuses to acknowledge the truth, the war will go on. Hiding the truth has taken a heavy toll on Japan, and I wish I had told you this before today. Thank you, and rest in peace. I hope that for one of us at least, the war is finally over.

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