Chieh Chien Chang was born in 1908 at Mingde village, Fengtian Province, part of the Manchuria region in China. Three years after his birth, the last emperor of China would be dethroned; twenty-three years later, the Japanese invasion of China would change his life forever. The Manchuria region was a fertile Chinese agricultural and industrial frontier. Frontier justice ruled over there, so much so that Dr. Chang’s fellow villagers often “kept guns by their beds, out of fear.” The territory was openly coveted by the expanding Japanese and Russian empires. Japan gained the upper-hand in the region after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.