Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Horrors
There was an amazing documentary on The American Experience on PBS last night. It was about the war in the Pacific theatre, and it was very disturbing. The profound disconnect between the American and Japanese cultures really seems to have contributed to the horrific bloodshed, where civilians were seen as fair game, not for the first time in warfare. What was so incredible about this film was the footage; some of the images were so intense I couldn't believe I was watching real footage of it. My mind wanted to think that those Japanese people committing suicide by jumping off a cliff, or those kamikaze planes smashing into warships, or the soldiers using flamethrowers in caves where Japanese refused to come out, were re-enactments or recreations of some sort. It's unreal to see something so intensely real.
I spoke to a veteran today at the mall. He has a chest full of medals. He volunteered when he was 19 and served for 6 years, and landed on Normandy on D-day. Another veteran went to my daughter's class today. She said that he told them that he was at Nagasaki, or 120 feet under Nagasaki, when the atomic bomb was dropped. He said that when they came up from underground there was nothing but smoke everywhere.
You pass people every day who have seen unimaginable horrors. They are survivors of more than events in history. They are survivors of the sight of the gaping hole at the center of human morality.
There was an amazing documentary on The American Experience on PBS last night. It was about the war in the Pacific theatre, and it was very disturbing. The profound disconnect between the American and Japanese cultures really seems to have contributed to the horrific bloodshed, where civilians were seen as fair game, not for the first time in warfare. What was so incredible about this film was the footage; some of the images were so intense I couldn't believe I was watching real footage of it. My mind wanted to think that those Japanese people committing suicide by jumping off a cliff, or those kamikaze planes smashing into warships, or the soldiers using flamethrowers in caves where Japanese refused to come out, were re-enactments or recreations of some sort. It's unreal to see something so intensely real.
I spoke to a veteran today at the mall. He has a chest full of medals. He volunteered when he was 19 and served for 6 years, and landed on Normandy on D-day. Another veteran went to my daughter's class today. She said that he told them that he was at Nagasaki, or 120 feet under Nagasaki, when the atomic bomb was dropped. He said that when they came up from underground there was nothing but smoke everywhere.
You pass people every day who have seen unimaginable horrors. They are survivors of more than events in history. They are survivors of the sight of the gaping hole at the center of human morality.
# posted by becca : 12:17 PM
