Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Book Report
The book I read was Flyboys by James Bradley, about the mistreatment and murder of 8 prisoners of war taken at Chichi Jima during World War 2, just 25 miles away from Iwo Jima. This book was really interesting to me because it was about the perspective of both the United States and Japan. The story of these 8 prisoners was a focus, becaue it had been classified for so long, but the bigger picture was looking at all of the little factors and cultural trends that led to the way that Japan and the United States were at the time of World War 2. I thought this was really cool because the event that the author was talking about was something that the Japanese did that was really horrific, but he still managed to tell both sides relatively without bias. I learned a lot about Japanese culture that I didn't know, including that the suicidal kamikazes and samurai and stuff, was not originally part of their military culture, it was mostly the government twisting tradition to control people. I also learned that the U.S. wasn't as innocent as they pretended when it came to Imperialism and their policies in colonized nations. This book was very interesting due to the fact that it gave me such a new perspective on things that I already thought I had a pretty good understanding of.
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4 comments:
I did not know that the whole Samurai thing wasn't a tradition. Go figure though that the government would try to control people and create one to suit their needs.
It's so rare to have an author writing two perspectives on such a horrific circumstances, even rarer from that there isn't any bias. I mean i am assuming the author is American?? And i am just as surprised as Kate that the Samurai thing wasn't tradition in Japan...
I feel like this theme keeps popping up- the U.S. isn't as innocent as they pretend to be. Isn't that what they want you to think- that the U.S. is innocent and the good guy always? And clearly thats the perspective they would teach in their high school curriculum- so we produce a population of devoted American citizens instead of critical thinkers who can analyze an issue, even when it doesn't paint the U.S. in a good light. So I commend you- I'm happy you read this book, and I'm happy you got this new perspetive. It will only benefit you in the future.
Hahaha your comment at the end about the United States being innocent kind of makes me laugh. I feel like we always come off as doing the right things, but in reality we kind of do a lot of wrong under the radar! But that sounds like a really cool book, I like how you told about the author remaining unbias through out the book. I can imagine that's hard to do in that type of story but it sounds like you learned a lot! And I really do not know a ton about both side of the story so it sounds like a good book for me! :)
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