Forum - View topicNEWS: Kickstarter to Give Barefoot Gen Manga to Schools, Libraries Reaches Goal
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Interesting. I never even gave the thought about multiple levels of surrendering. It's a pretty recent concept to me.
While it was never directly taught in school (or college) to me, an impression I had in history class was that there's only one kind of surrender: Total surrender. Either you won a war and could now decide what to do with the losers in however way you please, or you lost a war and were subject to every demand that the winners made, and hoped the winners felt merciful to you. But most of my history teachers had kind of a sympathy for any side that lost a war, regardless of which war it was. There may have been a bias to make the winners seem more brutal and cruel. |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5484 |
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I hear about this a lot, and it always surprises me. In my own experience you can show a young person, a cartoon or comic book from long ago and they will react the same way as if it was new, because I suppose to them it is new. |
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omiya
Posts: 1848 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Whilst most ANN readers have heard of Grave of The Fireflies even if they haven't watched it, it is also worth a visit when in Tokyo to a place like "The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage" http://www.tokyo-sensai.net/, to get an idea of how bad the firebombing was.
Full-sized model of an incendiary bomb with some actual incendiary shells in front of it. |
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yaki-udon
Posts: 83 |
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I think it was a huge mistake for Japan to attack America in the first place. We should have been content with occupying China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. We wouldn't be worrying about the decline of the population right now. But in all seriousness, I consider Japan's shrinking population to be a good thing. Japan is about the size of California and what's worse, only about 30% of the land is inhabitable. There's just too many people living on this small island.
My opinion of Barefoot Gen is that it is not so much an anti-war manga as an anti-Japan manga. |
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Hameyadea
Posts: 3679 |
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While I think that it is a good idea to make this manga available, I doubt that it will resonate enough with most kids nowadays to be worthwhile (I'm specifically referring to schools, not the library aspect). Maybe it will be the subject of the occasional Book Report or something similar, but that's about as much involvement as those books will get, IMO.
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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It's a different matter if they associate it with people of their parents' or grandparents' age though.
Oh, that'll get kids to REALLY not like reading it. |
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One-Eye
Posts: 2265 |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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Anime Hero25
Posts: 26 |
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I don't see how you teacher could sympathize with them actually I could doesn't the losing side have to pay for damages in restitution? |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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In the case of Japan, what I remember was that there was some agreement (I think one of the Atlantic Charters) where for every five ships the United States had, Germany would also have five ships but Japan could only have three. However, the United States and Germany would look the other way if Japan took over parts of Asia. So a few years down the line, the Japanese military started taking over Manchuria and parts of Korea. By then, the United States had a different president (FDR, I think), who was not okay with it, so they sent forces over to defend the rest of Asia. Discussions between the United States and Japan began heated, got bitter, and before anyone else knew it, Pearl Harbor was bombed.
That's how my AP US History class had it. Considering most of my history classes pertained to either US history or European history, it'd make sense that most of my teachers would side with whoever lost, because they were usually some civilization getting invaded, then curb-stomped and taken over. |
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13597 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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While I personally feel events like the Rape of Nanking, Pearl Harbor bombing, and the atomic bombing on Hiroshima & Nagasaki was wrong from the standpoint that many unnecessary people were harmed, the same argument can be made about war in general. That is, since wars often have events that will harm so many unnecessary people. By "unnecessary people", I mean those that didn't deserve to be harmed.
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