Citations

Davies, Nick, Jonathan Steele, and David Leigh. 'Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture.' The Guardian. 22 Oct. 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2010.

Grammaticas, Damian. 'South Korea Warns North after Island Clash.' BBC Asia-Pacific. BBC. 23 Nov. 2010. Web video. 23 Nov. 2010.

Griffin, Susan. A Chrous of Stones. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print.

Hardcastle, Paul. '19'. 1985. Web video. 28. Oct. 2010.

Jelinek, Pauline. 'Wartime PTSD Cases Jumped Roughly 50 pct. in 2007.' The Huffington Post. 27 May 2008. Web. 06 Oct. 2010.

Landry, Bob. Rita Hayworth. 1941. 'Rita Hayworth.' NPR. 13 May 2002. Web. 24 Oct. 2010.

Lynn, Vera. 'We'll Meet Again.' Web video. 28 Oct. 2010.

Nadir, Leilah. The Orange Trees of Baghdad. Toronto: Key Porter, 2007. Print.

Nosh, Farah. 'Wounded Iraq.' farahnosh.com. Web. 28 Nov. 2010.

Oberst, Conor. 'When the President Talks to God.' 2005. Web video.

Sakamoto, Kerri. One Hundred Million Hearts. Toronto: Knopf, 2003. Print.

Scarry Elaine. The Body in Pain. New York: OUP, 1987. Print.

'South Korea Warns North after Island Clash.' BBC Asia-Pacific. BBC. 23 Nov. 2010. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.

Wassef, Khaled. 'Timeline of Yemen Bomb Plot.' CBS. 30 Oct. 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2010.

What is the private life of war?

My ideas about this phrase are still fairly similar to what I originally said in the first entry. However, having read the books on the syllabus I feel that sometimes even if someone's story is made public, through a book or through photographs such as the ones taken by Farah Nosh and used in Nadir's The Orange Trees of Baghdad, their story is still a mostly private one. Unless you read these books or stumble upon the photos, you are not likely to encounter these stories, only the ones that are shown in the mainstream media, of soldiers and insurgents, which we are so detached from, they seem like stories not real events.

If the private is the story we don't see and the public is the one we do see, there can still be public private stories as described above but can there be private public stories? I guess there can be in that there are war stories that are very public such as this president or that prime minister sanctioned this or that action but we don't know how these actions affect them personally. For example, someone who gives the order to resort to go to war will have their story told many times over in the media. The private side of this story may never be told though. Do they suffer from night terrors over the people who have died because of their order? Etc. Many politicians and civil servants now publish autobiographies and memoirs but how accurate are these? Is what they publish the true story or just what they want people to read about them? Sometimes the only way to know a persons true story is to be that person or extremely close them. This is the case in Sakamoto's One Hundred Million Hearts Miyo does not learn that her father was a kamikaze pilot until his after his death because he kept his life of war so private.

So, in conclusion, sometimes the private lives and the public lives can exist together, although this is rare. As I mentioned in the original post, there are factors which affect people for many years after the war is over and I would have liked for of the texts to have dealt with this, especially the mental health problems experienced by those who have witnessed first hand wars and conflicts.

How do we react to war as filtered through the media?

I am lucky, I have never had any first hand experience of war. The closest I have come was the 7/7 bombings in London, my home city. My Dad's cousin is a Tube driver but he was fine. There was a boy in my class whose father was the driver of the Piccadilly Line train that was attacked and he also survived. There was a general sense of panic but the next week I was back travelling the Tube just as I always had. I guess I just adopted the attitude of my family which was that we'd survived the IRA bombings, we'd survive this. You can't shut yourself away from life because you might get blown up. I have no friends or family who serve in the armed forces, so I am not filled with fear when the news announces another death in Iraq or Afghanistan. Other than the major terrorist attacks, most news about violence and war bypasses me in a way. It's a horrible thing to say. There's just so much information out there in the world nowadays and I don't have the ability to fully process it. Maybe it's not even that, because the important things stick, such as the North/South Korea situation. Maybe it's just that I'm so used to people dying in Afghanistan and Iraq and many other countries around the world that I have no connection to that I've lost the ability to care. Another person has died. It's sad and horrible, but in a couple of days time, some more people will die. Often I won't even know who they were. They were just the 2/20/200 nameless people who died. If it connected to my life somehow on a more personal level, maybe I'd have an emotion stronger than apathy. If think this is why reading Leilah Nadir's The Orange Trees of Baghdad was so interesting to read because she offered the reader a personal connection, she told them about her family and what was happening to them.

Interspersing

Here is a small experiment interspersing news relating to conflicts around the world and what I posted that day.
Key of abbreviations: FB = Facebook, BS = Blogspot, EM = Email.

October 22nd 2010

The 'Iraq War Logs' are leaked today on WikiLeaks. Almost 400,000 secret army files were leaked including evidence of torture and logs of civilian deaths when both the American and British governments had denied that official records of civilian deaths existed (Davies, Steele, and Leigh.)

FB: Fran Roberts knocked a bottle of Fuze over her desk and now her glasses are sticky :(

October 29th 2010

Two parcel bombs were intercepted on cargo planes. The bombs are believed to have originated in Yemen and were made by members of Al Qaeda. The bombs were addressed to synagogues in the Chicago and were due to explode whilst the planes were in mid-air (Wassef.) I wonder if the synagogues were chosen as a retaliation to the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government. The middle east has been volatile for a long time and that would certainly increase tensions.

EM: I might just head over and get stuff now. If I can't find any whiskey I like, will vodka/gin/rum be ok?

November 23rd 2010 (22^nd PST)

As mentioned in my previous entry on this journal, North Korea launched an attack on South Korea.

BS: The weather has been firmly stuck in the minus figures for a few days now. If I haven't spoken to you and told you, we have snow. Vancouver rarely has snow and we're currently about 10 degrees less than we should be at this time of year - yay!

This experiment was done retrospectively and not as the events happened. It is interesting to see how world events have not entered into what I write on these various sites and yet I knew of all these things at the time they were relevant. I guess the only explanation I can give is that these are my personal postings about things in my life and unless the wars and the conflicts and the attacks directly affect my life, they probably won't get mentioned. Whilst Susan Griffin's entries also relate to her life, she often comments on what is going on in the wider world around her, such as the mentions of the first Gulf war.

North Korea, South Korea, and Social Networking

Last night before I went to bed (22/11/2010) I was about to login to my Twitter account when I noticed the Top Tweets page was full of Tweets about North Korea attacking South Korea. I immediately checked several news websites to try to get an idea of what was going on.This clip on the BBC website shows the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island plus a small report on the situation.

I am reminded of the part in Susan Griffin's 'A Chorus of Stones' where she writes, "I run upstairs to the television. A reporter is quietly describing bombs as they are being dropped in Baghdad." (319- 320.) We are separate, far away from the action, yet we learn about it as it happens, not days, weeks or even years later, as was the case with many previous conflicts. Griffin's book was written before the advent of many new technologies. It's easier now than ever before to learn about what is going on. It's possible to learn what's going on from social networking sites instead of watching, reading or listening to the news.

The two screen grabs above come respectively from my personal Twitter and Facebook. They illustrate a tiny fraction of what is being said about the situation. Just looking at the internet and ignoring print, television and radio, you can find almost any viewpoint you can imagine, from news correspondents in South Korea reporting what is going on, to average people reacting to what they have seen and heard.

I am reminded of the game I played as a child, Chinese Whispers. Someone whispers something and it is passed on through various people until it has come full circle. Whether the message comes back the same as it started all depends. It's the same with the media and social networking, I feel. Someone witnesses the event, they tell a journalist, they tell their version of the story, someone else comes across this article or broadcast, they tweet or blog about it, I read it in Canada and the story I end up with has been filtered through different people with various perspectives and political slants.

In this exercise I have tried to comment on events as they are happening but it is difficult and I think sometimes you need to look at a situation retrospectively to fully understand it.

War through Music?

Through the course we have watched documentaries about war and we have read books which used different methods of portraying war stories to us. There are the journal entries in Griffin, the letters in Sakamoto, and the photographs in Nadir. We have watched the film version of Jarhead. These are all mediums which rely on sight, although the film sources do use audio as well as visual narratives. This led me to wonder, other than the radio, audiobooks, and the audio narratives of film media, how else could the war be brought to people who are sight impaired. I've decided to look at songs to do with war.

One of the most famous singers during WWII in Britain was Dame Vera Lynn. She is famous for her song 'We'll meet again' which can be found here. This song seems very optimistic that people separated by war will meet again. It was certainly good for morale, especially during the Blitz.

Later on there, both during and after the Vietnam War, songs were written to protest against wars and to highlight what had happened during these wars. The one that I find the most hard hitting is '19' by Paul Hardcastle, which can be found here. The repetition of '19' is especially disturbing to me as I am only twenty myself and my younger brother is eighteen.

In recent years the songs have been as critical of those behind the order to go to war as they are of the wars themselves. 'When the President Talks to God' by Bright Eyes is an example of this. He criticises both the then President of the United States and amongst other things, his decisions to invade both Iraq and Afghanistan. This can be heard here.

These three songs are just a tiny selection of a much wider genre. It seems as though over the years people have become less united and more critical of war. This could be because they have a wider availability of sources of information or because WWII could be seen as a just war and Vietnam and the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions cannot. Either way, it is interesting how the attitudes have changed.

Breaking the Traditional Narrative Mold

How does Susan Griffin attempt to 'break' the traditional narrative mold?

She does several things. First of all, her narrative does not follow the traditional linear style that we have come to expect from works dealing with historical events. Instead, it cuts and jumps between different times and events. An example of this can be found on page 76 where the narrative skips from 1945 and the night before Hiroshima is bombed to 1986 and the invention of the center fire metallic cartridge to 1941 and Life magazine publishing the photograph of Rita Hayworth featured above.

The second thing that Griffin does is interspersing her journal entries with historical events, in part VI of the book, 'Notes Towards a Sketch for a Work in Progress (271 - 363.) This is an interesting technique as it allows the reader to gain an insight into Griffin's personal thoughts and feelings on her work, her life, and the events taking place in the world around her, such as the first Gulf War. A 21st century version of this would perhaps be created by interspersing blog, social networking or email entries interspersed with current news events. This is perhaps a technique I should attempt later on, although how successful this would be, I am not sure. My entries on these sites tend not to be related to world wide events and more often complaints about the weather.

The third and perhaps most important way in which Griffin attempts to 'break' the traditional narrative mold is that she uses the stories of ordinary people. Whilst there are the well known names that are expected from an historical piece, such as Heinrich Himmler and Hugh Trenchard, but she also tells the stories of ordinary people who have been affected by war, such as Yõko, the woman who is the same age as Griffin and survived Hiroshima, and Hélène, the woman who survived the concentration camps and Griffin meets on the Paris Metro. These are the stories of ordinary people, just like the reader, who have survived extraordinary things. Their stories are more interesting, to me at least, than learning about this or that general whose story has been told in hundreds of books. Griffin shows us the stories that have not been made public, the private lives of war.

An Alternate Past

After WWII was over, my maternal grandfather had to do his national service. He served in the air force. He, along with a friend (I don't know his name), were offered jobs in America by Boeing to help them design their planes. My grandfather stayed but this friend went and they continued to keep in touch over the years. I do wonder though, what would have happened if my grandfather had gone. In the books on the course there have been examples of families split across multiple countries, including One Hundred Million Hearts (Japan and Canada) and The Orange Trees of Baghdad (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, UK, Canada.) Here is my imagining of the way things may have turned out.

****

My grandparents decide that they are going to go to America. They get married in a small church in Woking. Whilst they are glad to be living together on their own, they're nervous about moving to a new country.

Eventually they arrive and they find a place to rent. My grandfather goes to work for Boeing and in the meantime they have three children Michael, Denise, and Paul who my grandma stays at home to raise.

They have a happy life and Denise is the last to leave home. She decides to visit her family in England and travel around Europe. On the island of Majorca, she meets a man named Donald. They are soon married and decide to set up home in London.

Denise and Donald have two children, Francesca and Benjamin. They have regular contact with their family in the US. On September 11th 2001 several terrorist attacks occur in the USA. The family is in shock. Michael was working in the south tower. The planes used are Boeing planes. The company that brought them to the US in the first place, is now a cause for grief in the family.

****

I know this is a very rough outline but I have a word limit. I also realise that my parents meeting is unlikely in this context but without them an imagined alternate past for my family would be pointless. It’s interesting to see how one decision could potentially change so many things. I am reminded of the part in Nadir’s book just after her parents have gotten married and her aunts want them to move to Iraq. How different Leilah’s life would have been if they had.

What is the private life of war?

To me, the phrase 'the private life of war' suggests the aspects of war which are hidden from the public view. These can be the after-effects of war or the events that take place during war which are hidden or disguised from the public. When I say disguised, I am referring to acts of redescription and acts of omission, as described in Scarry (69-70). When a victory is declared, the number of dead is often omitted, giving the public a false sense of accomplishment. Even if the number of dead is given, it is usually only for the defeated army. The number of dead and wounded within the victorious side is often not included. The public doesn't know and doesn't see those who are dead and wounded from within the victorious army so they may not grasp the enormity of the situation but those who are involved in the fighting are affected by the friends they have lost and the injuries sustained, as are the close friends of family who are dead and wounded.

Let us not forgot that the wounds of war are not just limited to physical ones, there are also the mental scars of those involved in war, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression. This statistics are not as prominent within the public sphere but they cause many problems for those who are affected and the people around them, often for the rest of their lives. A report from 2008 shows that roughly 40,000 US troops had been diagnosed with the condition from 2003 onwards (Jelinek.) This is a fairly large number but it does not take into account the numbers of those are suffering from previous conflicts, are in the forces of other nations, or civilians and emergency workers who are also suffering. The total number of people around the world who are suffering from PTSD as a result of serving in the military or being involved as a civilian in a conflict zone is something that will probably never be known due to the stigma around mental health conditions. This to me is the private life of war.