08-02-2020, 07:49 AM
That's exactly my point, really.
It's a rare thing to have this stark calculus where a certain number of lives taken are traded for a theoretical number of lives saved. It becomes complicated, who gets to be born and who doesn't, who dies and why. I have a similar story as you: I got to be born.
I lived in Japan for a brief time, just an hour north of Nagasaki. (There was a good pizza place there which I visited frequently.) I have no defense for Imperial Japan. I also have no defense for the shadows of civilians that got burned on to concrete. All I can say is that I have a sense of gratitude and indebtedness for the fact that I am here at the expense of someone else.
It's a rare thing to have this stark calculus where a certain number of lives taken are traded for a theoretical number of lives saved. It becomes complicated, who gets to be born and who doesn't, who dies and why. I have a similar story as you: I got to be born.
I lived in Japan for a brief time, just an hour north of Nagasaki. (There was a good pizza place there which I visited frequently.) I have no defense for Imperial Japan. I also have no defense for the shadows of civilians that got burned on to concrete. All I can say is that I have a sense of gratitude and indebtedness for the fact that I am here at the expense of someone else.
(08-02-2020, 07:12 AM)dukealien Wrote: If only she could have been named Guinevere, and his rifle Excalibur...
Could pick up most of the references. The "fruits [which] were debts impossible to quantify or pay" confused me, though.
I believe my father would have been on a radar picket ship for the invasion of Honshu - the ones the kamikazes got to first. And here I am instead. We need to respect nuclear weapons, in various senses of the word.