If other things hadn't sucked the life out of me. I just finished reading Flags of Our Fathers, about the men in the famous Iwo Jima flagraising photo. It was fascinating, not just because I don't know much about the Pacific Theatre, but because it offers a lot of relevant insight into the ways in which the media create the story of war thorugh images. Particularly interesting is the revelation of jealous backbiting directed at the fellow who took the famous snapshot. Not that the book is a big lecture--quite the opposite. But you get just as much of a feel for the author's shamefaced realization that he was an idiot about his father's and his father's comrades' war experiences as you do information about the fight for Iwo Jima.
After reading this, Ghost Soldiers, and The Rape of Nanking (which has a 445 customer review flamewar going on its Amazon page), let's just say I can understand why my Uncle, who was in the Marines and drove the landing craft for the island fighting, doesn't particularly care for Japanese food or cars. He never says anything about his service, and he never says anything about the Japanese, but he draws the line at cars and cuisine. Given what those Marines went through, and the trouble many of them had with returning home to a "normal life," I think that's just as reasonable a way of dealing with it as any. And I feel pretty shamefaced about my reaction to his polite refusal to attend my high school graduation dinner at a Japanese steakhouse--that he should just "get over it, I mean, it was, like, FORTY YEARS AGO!" Gah. Seventeen year old girls should probably all be given a mandatory "get over yourself" bitchslap immediately preceding college. Actually, they should probably be given a preliminary "yeah, you're an adolescent. AND?" bitchslap on their fourteenth birthday. Not that it would in any way stem the tide of self-absorbed stupidity, but it might make them feel better twenty or thirty years down the road, when they remember the stupidity and wince.
And so, to conclude this somewhat disjointed post: read Flags of Our Fathers. Thank you, veterans and soldiers. And to those of you who think it's cool to advocate that soldiers kill their officers, or to compare soldiers to slaves (link via Baldilocks): drop dead. No, wait. Read the book, and THEN drop dead. Preferably from shame, but hey, I'm not picky.
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Posted by: partypoker at November 20, 2004 02:53 PM