Now Reading

The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien. This is apparently a stroy extracted from The Silmarillion edited to be a complete work with few distracting refereneces to other events. Apparently Tolkien had intended for a number of stories in The Silmarillionto be stand alone works similar to The Hobbit and this was one of them. As I have already read The Silmarillion this should be nothing new, but it is nice to get back into the lore again.

Flyboys was very good. A very balanced view of the cruelty and barbarism of both the Americans and the Japanese during WWII. While it's been touted as a memorial to a number of pilots who were killed on the island of Chichi Jima around the time of the invasion of Iwo Jima, it is in fact an overview of the Pacific War in general. I think its a view that not a lot of people are aware of. I learned quite a few things that I thought of as gospel that turned out to be inaccurate. For example, I didn't realize the Emperor was as involved in running the war as he was. I always belived that it was the military that was in command, but it was apparently all a coverup by the U.S. military because after the surrender of Japan, McArthur thought that if the Emperor were brought to trial that Japan would collapse. He compared how he thought the Japanese considered the Emperor was equivalent to how Christians thought of Jesus. In reality the ordinary Japanese citizen had no contact with the Emperor and it wasn't until late in the 19th century with the loss of power of the Shogun that the Emperor even had any power at all. Regardless its interesting how people's biases are played out. A very good read if a bit gruesome on the details but I'm not sure I would have wnated the facts sugar coated anyway.