A further explanation

Expanding on the disclaimer I included in my previous post about my visit to Pearl Harbor:

In all past, present, and future blog entries that are relevant to World War II, I am in no way whatsoever romanticizing or idealizing the actual warfare or the climate of the WWII Era. I am well-aware that WWII was ugly and brutal and cost millions of lives in the worst ways while affecting millions of other people.

What I mean to say - and sometimes forget because I just get so excited - is that I am obsessed with learning and reading about WWII, not WWII itself.

And that includes everything: visiting museums and memorials (how bad do you think I feel when I say the Holocaust Museum was the most captivating and memorable part of my 8th grade Washington DC trip?), reading memoirs and accounts by survivors, reading historical fiction set in the WWII Era (from the perspectives of the Jewish people in the concentration camps, from the perspectives of the Japanese affected by the American concentration camps, from the Filipinos affected by the bloody Bataan Death March - which I saw for myself in the Philippines back in 2007), reading WWII nonfiction, watching documentaries and movies, etc etc etc.

I think what makes me so fascinated by it - and gosh, I get so self-conscious saying that sometimes - is the fact that I am just trying to learn and understand how humanity could reach this point for the second time, only on a much grander and deadly scale. And more than that, millions of people died and millions more were affected in some way - don't their stories deserve to be heard? Aren't their stories worthy of time?

Maybe I'm weird, but by listening to and reading all these stories I feel as if I'm honoring them somehow; paying tribute in a small way.

Regardless of what it is, I greatly enjoy learning about World War II.

And again, I mean all this with the utmost respect to everyone who was affected by WWII.