When will we learn ?

It's 15 August and 70 years after the end of WWII in Asia. Two days after the second horrible atom bomb exploded Japan declared its capitulation. So many suffered during WWII and the suffering on all sides continues today, if not by the actual survivors then by the generations after them.

My paternal grandparents were prisoners of war, my grandfather was transported from what was then called Batavia , nowadays Jakarta on Java in Indonesia to Sumatra to be put to work on constructing one of those jungle train tracks that was never even used, but meant the death of many. Before he arrived on Sumatra the ship he and thousand others were transported in was torpedoed and sunk, so he actually also survived a shipwreck, with a fractured skull, which was never treated. My grandmother with her only child, my father, a boy 8 years old was held in the Tjideng camp. When my father turned 10 he was transported to a men's camp because boys over 10 were deemed men. My grandmother was devastated, now not knowing either where her husband or her son were, and decided to work in the camp hospital which was one of the most dangerous jobs to do, as there was nothing available to guard anyone against infections. The boys in the men's camps were left fending much for themselves, imagine boys of ten having to do that. And they had seen horrible things happening to their mothers while still with them at an impressionable age.
My family came through this, they all survived, though they carried the physical and mental wounds all their lives. Actually the capitulation of Japan didn't mean immediate freedom for them, my father had his 12th birthday on Nov 1, 1945 still in the POW camp (he got a Pound note from a Scottish soldier guarding them there for that birthday)

We're 70 years later and I have lived all my life in freedom thanks to all who fought in that war. But look at the state of the world today, the horror of war a daily occurrence for so many people in the world. Do we really want to have even more generations of hurt people? Children who have not had a peaceful youth? When will we learn? It does make me despair and weep for humanity, just like these gladiolus flowers seem to do.

For my grandparents, my father, my stepgrandfather, his children and everyone who was involved in WWII in Asia-Pacific.