ABSTRACT
As the chapters in this volume amply show, the process and art of remembering lead to diverging and conflicting interpretations of war. They remind us that there are many different kinds of remembering. The meanings of war that we glean from history books can be very different from those gleaned from art and poetry. And because the exercise of remembering is tied so closely to the human feelings of sorrow, suffering, horror, and regret, remembering creates an urgency in asking the question “Why?” Isn't there some way that war and all its suffering could have been avoided? The questions of the war's origins and the events leading up to the war hold particular urgency for Korean people, whose suffering dwarfs that of any other people involved. Why, after the Japanese surrender in 1945, was Korea divided in the first place? Could the war have been fought differently? Could it have ended differently, perhaps with less bitterness and divisiveness on the Korean peninsula? And there is the terribly human question—however much we may aspire to delay judgment—of who is responsible, and who is to blame.
