Hey all,

Things are definitely ramping up as we come close to finishing up our first term! I hope everyone makes it out okay(I’m using skiing and christmas as motivation). This week we started reading “Obasan”, a novel by Joy Kagawa that details the life of a Japanese family put through Canadian World War Two interment camps, as told through the perspective of the main character Naomi. When I first saw we were learning about an aspect of World War Two, I became pretty excited, as I loved learning about it as a younger child. My dad is a pretty big history buff, and he really enjoyed showing me movies and books that revolved around major battles and strategy. Previously, I had read a book in grade eight or so about American internment camps for Japanese citizens, although I cannot recall the name. I had not, however, really fully know that Canada did the same, and although it shouldn’t have, it came as a bit of a surprise.

This lead me on a little bit of a tangent. The more I thought about, the more countries I could attribute terrible and unethical crimes to. Germany and the Holocaust. Japan’s rape of Nanking and infamous Unit 731(where human testing occurred). The United States use of the Atomic bomb. It is almost symbiotic that a country in war is bound to commit some sort of unethical crime towards other humans, and not just countries at that. Individual soldiers, in the case of World War Two conscripted men who 6 months earlier had been living average every day lives, shooting at other human beings without a second thought. What is it in war that makes us able to kill with such detachment and apathy?

When I thought about it, I couldn’t really narrow it down to a single thing, rather I believe war is capable of instilling different reactions depending on the person. For some, nationalistic and patriotic call to defend country is enough to reason the killing of other perceived enemies. For some, it is kill or be killed, and a survival of the fittest mentality kicks in. Some, like the case of Russian soldiers in the battle of Stalingrad, have no choice but to follow orders or they themselves could risk being punished or killed for disobeying commands. Whatever the case,  most people when down to life or death will not hesitate to take the life of another. Personally, I find it so incredible to think that human beings, who we like to call civilized, who many would argue are inherently good, can so willingly become cold-blooded murderers. However, I believe that if I was thrust into a war situation I too would not hesitate to pull the trigger. Maybe instead of being inherently good, we are instead inherently selfish. And can you really blame people for wanting to live, to explore and experience the world a bit longer instead of having it ended early by a bullet?

I don’t mean to say that war and killing in war doesn’t affect the people emotionally afterwards. Many suffer from massive amounts of guilt, disgust, and disbelief at what they have done. An article I read on Vice News told the story of a soldier who had killed for the first time, and what it was like for him when he “slowly began to humanize the mangled faces of the guys we’d killed. I remembered wondering if there was a tiny little Iraqi girl crying at home because dad didn’t come back, or if there was a wife with a husband who was now gone forever.”(Anonymous). That we feel regret and remorse for what we have done is a good sign, a sign that we are possibly not biologically meant to kill other humans. Perhaps, in the moment, we are pushed to survive by personal sentiments, by a desire to live, and that desire overrides our conscious thought. It is a matter of speculation for me, as I have never been in that kind of scenario and hope never to be, but it is sobering to think about nonetheless.

Till next time,

Nick