koreanwarvetama [they/them]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 31st, 2022

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  • What was his reaction to your being a communist?

    He was stunned. Mostly, he just looked sad and accepting of it. No violent outburst or anything, or trying to convince me otherwise. Later, he did note his disapproval but he never said anything to persuade me away from it. If anything, my other relatives were more against it and considered me disrespectful of him because of the war he was in and tried their damndest to persuade me. He never said anything and just looked incredibly sad when they talked in support of him as a vet and in the war. Sometimes he'd even wear a veterans shirt or cap places, I think, to torture himself with people thanking him. He once commented to me how disgusting and pathetic one guy was who essentially groveled to him in thanks of his service.

    Additionally, do you think he said nothing because of what he had already confessed to you? Or was it more of an “honor” thing for him to just not share information given in confidence?

    Not sure. He never said anything to his wife or kids, only me. Really, the reasoning for why he only tells me is enigmatic and he has never explained it. Could be shame, could be he's afraid of getting caught in a lie, could be afraid that everyone knew him for so long and are upset that he never told them. Don't know.

    So did he bring kids of the Japanese woman with him to live in the States?

    No, I mentioned getting in contact with them but he flatly refused. It was an extramarital affair and he thinks he'd only cause more pain by talking to them. After he dies, I might contact the Japanese relatives, though honestly I'm leaning on contacting them sooner than that just so I can have better questions to ask him.

    Leaflets have been historically used to spread disease (Ukraine is even accused of using them to spread TB as recently as a few years ago), so it could be that CO or whatever was telling the truth. Obviously, if your goal is polluting something, leaflets aren’t the optimal way to go, but if you already have an excess of plague leaflets or a method of safely assembling such a payload, perhaps the air force decided existing means/methods were “good enough” for this job as well.

    TIL



  • I feel extremely conflicted emotions about him myself. The guy was genuinely helpful to me as a kid. When I told him he was a racist piece of shit, he listened and changed his words, like he genuinely cared what I said. He said some homophobic shit during one of our talks, I told him to stop, and he stopped. No questions asked, never did it again. I do genuinely feel that if he wasn't propagandized, felt like his country was 'right' and 'correct' after WW2 and its propaganda, if there was less systemic racism, he would have been a genuinely good guy.

    But he wasn't, and turned out to be a monster. Its very disconcerting and horrifying to know this is how the world can work, especially learning that as a kid. But the only way to respond to this sort of thing is to side with the victims, of which he has many.












  • He spent a lot of time with me alone is the main thing I think. It was a pretty long drive to get to school and I figure his mind wandered a lot during it and he was the only person able to take me to it for like 7 years. I was also a very curious and critical kid and I think he liked that and enjoyed encouraging it. In a fucked up way, I do think he had a good interest in mind by telling me about this at a formative age. It certainly made me very discerning about what was in my history books in school. But it was probably way too early to tell me. Maybe when I was a teen. But I also get a hint that he wanted to discourage me from joining the military, and my parents would goad me with the idea a lot citing him as a good example. So maybe it was his nuclear solution, and despite being an incredibly shitty person, he does feel regret about it or at least didn't want me to be subjected to the PTSD he has. Which is something, I guess.