Katy R

When I was six my view of the world was always the same thing, there were the good guys and what they were doing was right. I could never be more wrong. Learning about the Second World War has changed my views of the world and I realize how people can be so cruel and unfair. I now know the world has it good sides and it’s bad sides--that day I finally understood. I’ll never say again that everything ends in a happy story.

I had heard stories about how the Nazis were very bad, but I have found out many of them had no idea what they were getting themselves into. I knew in the beginning that Adolf Hitler was a very bad person and that we should try to not have people turn out like him. I learned through my studies that his past was very difficult and that he wasn’t always a racist. I have learned that Russia had helped us, so looking back, not on the cold war; my opinion of the Russians has changed in the good way, but not by much.

I believe the Japanese people are good because what they only did what they were told, but I’ve learned that I will try to question when I do not believe what the government is saying. Their government would make up lies about us and they should have told the truth. However they were trying to win another war and would do anything to not help us. We were also not very kindly toward the Japanese soldiers, and I think we could have tried to negotiate for peace instead of dropping the atomic bomb. I still think that the atomic bomb did solve our problems, but we shouldn’t have dropped it on innocent people. Our intentions were good for us, if I could go back and change the decision, I probably wouldn’t change it.

I felt that what we did to the Germans is what we had to do and that I’m not sorry that we bombed the Japanese because they were treating the American soldiers badly. I do feel that signing treaties could have helped and we should have tried that instead of bombing. Now I feel that if we had tried just a little bit harder, then the world could have turned out very different from today.

You can’t deny the fact that what we did was bad, but you can’t say that Adolf Hitler was a great man along with the emperor of Japan, Hirohito. Nobody can say that war is a good thing and I won’t either because I know what war does to people. It shows peoples inner selves, sometimes that can be a bad thing, or a good thing. I have found out that the world can be your friend one minute, then the next it can be your worst enemy. Reflecting on the war has made my view of the world different and that reminding me that even though people have been cruel and unfair since the beginning of time I’m glad to live in a free country.