 When Iris Chang was a child , she was told by her parents , who had escaped with their families from China to Taiwan and then to the United States after World War II , that during the Nanking Massacre , the Japanese " sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths . " In the introduction of The Rape of Nanking , she wrote that throughout her childhood , the Nanking Massacre " remained buried in the back of [ her ] mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil . " When she searched the local public libraries in her school and found nothing , she wondered why no one had written a book about it . 
