"Pacific Atrocities Education" by Jenny Chan

World War II may have ended 80 years ago, but it’s still happening for Jenny Chan, a 2012 University of Illinois graduate.Chan is president and founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, a non-profit based in San Francisco that churns out history regarding World War II’s Pacific front.In addition to publishing 29 books by a wide variety of authors that document human rights abuses, military battles, resistance efforts, and relate other untold efforts from the war, Chan’s group has produced over 500 short historical videos for Pacific Front Untold on YouTube. The group’s website, pacificatrocities.org, has been visited by over half a million visitors in the past 12 months, said Chan, a Chinese-American who first heard horror stories about the war in Asia from her grandmother, who was living in Hong Kong at the time.The stated mission of Pacific Atrocities Education is to increase awareness about atrocities committed in the Asia-Pacific Theater of World War II through public history projects, said Chan who believes that future generations need to understand, and share this history, she said. Chan said that an estimated 25 million to 35 million people died in Asia during WWII.Through publishing books, creating educational resources, and heading archival projects on topics such as Korean comfort women, the Bataan Death March, Unit 731 (a biochemical weapons program), and the Nanjing Massacre, the group seeks to help survivors find closure while increasing the dialogue about complex contemporary issues that surround human rights worldwide, said Chan.While WWII ended in 1945, information related to what happened during the conflict continues to come to light as files are declassified, said Chan, who soon plans another visit to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to do further research. Chan isn’t the first U of I grad to get involved in the war in Asia. “After graduating 100 years before me, in 1912, Minnie Vautrin became a missionary in China and famously saved the lives of at least 10,000 Chinese refugees during the Japanese army’s 1937 invasion of Nanjing. Sixty years later, University of Illinois Iris Chang (class of 1989) unearthed Vautrin’s diary for her award-winning book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,” she said.Pacific Atrocities Education plans a Sept. 18 conference in San Francisco, said Chan “to build bridges and advocate for a more peaceful future.”