One of the funniest dinner conversations was when my daughter was in high school and they were studying WWII. The teacher was telling them about the Hiroshima bomb, and how it wasn’t necessary.
My mother in law was living with us. He brother lost a leg in the war.
She started off and went on for about 15 minutes about life in 1945. She ended with something along the lines of, “Your teacher only knows what they read in books. I was here. I lived through it. Who are you going to believe? It’s really easy to judge things after the fact.”
I didn’t laugh out loud...but it was not something I ever expected from this quiet old woman.
My daughter’s teacher asked this question when she was in 8th grade and we were stationed in Hawaii. I got her to ask the teacher about Japan’s atrocities (Nanking, Battaan, Unit 731 etc). The teacher asked her where she heard about those and she told her from me (I’m a history nut). Teacher said the school didn’t feel that 8th graders were mature enough to learn about them so they would learn them in high school. Yet in 8th grade they were showing them films of the Holocaust.