You know what bit me with the history bug and set me off to have a lifelong love of reading? I read Ted Lawson’s book “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” when I was about six and a half years old. Then I actually got to move to Japan about a year and a half later and SEE where they bombed (my Dad got orders to Yokosuka)
Then, when I got to the Philippines, I learned about the Bataan Death March, and my Boy Scout troop got to hike it.
I remember clearly being just horrified. Astounded. I had never encountered that level of human brutality in my young life before. Sure, I had heard about stuff in school, as in “What year was the Bataan Death March”, but as I read the in depth first hand accounts in a big, thick book, it dawned on me why humans really are the most feared creatures on earth, even though we aren’t particularly big, fast or strong.
I realized that what sets humans apart is that we do have a capacity for evil that animals simply do not have. And we have it in spades. As you can probably tell, I still feel the discomfort of that realization today. I think it is the reason I am a conservative and have been since I understood the general nature of politics...and that would be when I was around eleven or twelve.
I know how important history is, and that is what puts me particularly at odds with liberals. Their utopian views of the world are completely incompatible with the existence of an Imperial Japanese Army guard on the Bataan peninsula in 1942.
> Then, when I got to the Philippines, I learned about the Bataan Death March, and my Boy Scout troop got to hike it.
WOW!!! That would have been something, ay!
I can’t remember what book started my fascination with reading and history. I can recall being about nine and reading “They Were Expendable” by WL White, about the PT Boats in the Philippines, and a book called “Wing Leader” by John E Johnston, who was Britain’s top ace.
WW-II would have been a fascinating time to live thru. I feel privileged to have lived in a time when I could meet and talk to people who went thru it first-hand, the Greatest Generation. One by one they are leaving us, and one day soon there will be none left. None...