Our country our duty

I watched the last episode of The Pacific this Monday. The mini series reminds me of the movie I saw in Taiwan. War is never pretty and glorious. I remember a girl being raped in Vietnam in the movie, and the soldier was trying to save her. I remember a girl who shaved her hair off because being a woman means that you don't have the right to live as a human being, you will be raped and you will be killed in another movie. I remember the man who fought the Japanese soldier in an arena because of pride and love of his country. China was invaded in Second World War, but even though most of the land had been taken over by the Japanese, people continue to fight back and resist the Japanese soldiers. They won't take Japanese names, they won't speak Japanese, they will fight the Japanese because it is our country.
My grandfather went to the war as a soldier. He seldom talked about his family, but he said that he was taken care of by a servant girl, a nanny. He went to the military school and trained to become an artillery man. He told us about the Clydesdale horses that pulled the cannons. He talked about how difficult the war became and they had to shoot the horses and eat them. Dad told us about how grandma escaped from China with her two young children, how granddad was still fighting with the troops, she's already back in Taiwan. They met again and had dad in Taiwan. What a joyous time!
The Pacific portrayed three main characters in the Second World War. The first one died in Iwo Jima, and he fought valiantly in Guan Canal, Papua New Guinea, and made a huge effort getting people to buy War Bond back in United States. The second one was a writer, he fought in Papua New Guinea as well, and got really sick in the jungle. He kept writing, reading, and the drama looked at the war philosophically as well. Is it right to send men forward when you know that they are crazy? What is the human limit? The Americans came into war from a different angle, it's patriotism that motivated them. They were attacked last by the Japanese in Pearl Harbour. However, the Chinese, the Korean, and the people of South East Asia are all invaded by the Japanese. Your home is torched, your belongings are taken away from you, and your relatives and friends are killed. People in these countries are perhaps motivated differently from the American. They are motivated by necessity, they are motivated because if they don't do anything, no one else will. I am sure that many people felt despair, sadness, anger, and wanted to get out of the war, but they couldn't. There was no food, no water, and you had to go on. You learn to live without.
What shapes us, as human, today? Our forefathers have fought in the war, either out of necessity, or out of patriotism, or for the greater good. We have to learn to prevent it from happening, we have to think that we are better at this now. We can do without killing one another, taking what's not ours, and live in peace. There are still so many wars going on in this war, if we can learn something from this series, it is this: stop fighting, and start living life again. War is ugly and wrong no matter how glorious people paint it. Soldiers who fought in the war should be taken care of when they come back home, and the people should work on reconstructing the war-torn countries. We can be friends. We can love one another.