01.29.09

Benjamen, who is all about Japan ever since starting karate, learned about World War II today.

He has a Japanese language tutorial on his Nintendo DS, loves going to the Japanese Steakhouse and trying all sorts of different dishes there, and checks out Japanese cooking books (and Japanese folklore, Japanese language, Japanese fact books, etc). Today he was listening to a CD of Japanese stories and came across the story of Sadako and the Paper Cranes. When he was finished listening (with his brothers, but they weren't as interested as he was) he had an avalanche of questions about leukemia, the atom bomb, World War II, etc., so we sat down with the laptop and googled to our hearts' content.

We found photos of Sadako and memorial statues erected in her honor. We found photos of what leukemia does to the blood and photos of children ravaged by the disease. We found photos of the mushroom clouds over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We found photos of the Enola Gay and I reminded him of the trip we took a few years ago to the Air & Space Museum where we saw it up close and personal (he didn't remember, so we're planning another trip back).

He wanted to know which president was in charge when the bombs were dropped (he's memorized all the presidents in the order that they took office, so I guess that piqued his interest). We looked up several bios on Harry Truman to get a good overview of the whats, hows and wherefores of the decision. We read about how many civilian men, women and children were killed and how many more suffered for decades from the radiation exposure. He asked, at that point, "Didn't they even care about all those little kids?" Broke my heart. His questions eventually led us to pages describing Hitler and the holocaust, at which point, he said, "No more photos."

All told, we spent a good hour and half reading, talking, and searching out the information he asked for. He's been processing it all ever since and has sought me out every half hour or so to ask more questions, most of them philosophical rather than factual. He just came in to ask, while I was typing this, "Why did they have to kill all of those people just because their leaders refused to surrender?" I didn't have an answer for him, of course. I asked him in return, "It seems like it doesn't make sense, doesn't it?"

We've were studying ancient history at the beginning of fall until everyone seemed to lose interest in the materials I had on hand. I've let it drop and we've been studying history as it affects us in our daily lives through holidays, the news, and spontaneous questions that the boys have posed themselves. I think that Benjamen learned more in a few hours today than he's learned all year, and in a way that was meaningful and important to him. I would bet any earthly possesion I have that this lesson will stick with him for the rest of his life, and that he'll still be talking to me and asking questions about it a month or a year from now.