Entry #5

One quote from Peggy that struck me is when she said, “We were gonna reach the end of the rainbow. When the war ended, the rainbow vanished. Almost immediately we went into Korea. There was no peace, which we were promised” (194). This made me think about how after wars in the US, like the Civil War and WWI, Americans didn’t want to go to war again because of the destruction they’d witnessed, but the country continually goes to war. Peggy mentioned that the US itself and most American citizens came out of the war unharmed because none of the fighting took place on American soil, and this might explain why the government continually opted to enter wars. While Americans knew soldiers who died in the war and the homefront experienced social and economic changes, most Americans didn’t witness the destruction first hand. If Americans didn’t fully understand the atrocities of war, then public opinion wouldn’t change and the government wouldn’t face opposition when deciding to go to war in the future. Or maybe each time the government considers entering a war, the motivation seems more important than earlier wars. Also, Peggy admitted that she was being manipulated into seeing all Japanese people as enemies, and she didn’t even realize it at the time. Because the government can use propaganda to turn Americans against different countries, ultimately the government decides when to go to war and American citizens will have to allow the government to do so.
Sledge reflected on how the soldiers in Japan (both Japanese and American) acted like savages during wartime. They no longer respected life or other humans because they had to desensitize themselves. Sledge showed the contrast between people as citizens and people as soldiers when he described a picture of a Japanese soldier. He said, “Here would be this soldier, sitting in a studio, with a screen behind and a table with a little flower on it. Often he’d be holding a rifle, yet there was always that little vase of flowers” (203). Every country claims its war aims are humane and that its people are benevolent, but all of the soldiers have to act inhumanely in order to fight. It’s a paradox because in order to bring peace there has to be violence and inhumane acts. Sledge even said, “After a while, the veneer of civilization wore pretty thin” (199). He showed that during wartime, people who were once humane lose their humanity in order to win.