I was taught to read at a very early age. As most young boys are wont to do, I soon started to read everything I could find on WWII, starting a life long love affair with history.
Of course boys of that age think themselves Immortal, all the horrible numbers of death and destruction are easily overlooked, in favor of Cool Rifles, Tanks or Planes. Young men tend to think more of heroism than the horror of holding your guts in and bleeding to death in the corner of some foriegn field.
Yet, I remember very clearly, one day, at around the age of nine or so, While flipping thru one of those big pictorial history books of WWII, Coming across a two page spread, on one page, was a picture of the Inside of a Nazi Gas Chamber, with a caption that described Six million people being herded into these things and exterminated like bugs. on the other page was what was left of a mans wrist watch that had been recovered from very near ground zero, at Hiroshima. the hands barely diserable on a hunk of melted metal, Burned off the wrist of it's owner.
There they were, the two most stark and horrible realities of our age. Genocide and The Bomb.
The realization coming together in childish mind, of the fact that there are people out there in the world, that would happily kill millions of people just because of there religion or a differing political ideal.
The realization that my childish world of happy play, backyard barbercues, bikes, School and family, could end in a second of blinding light and heat as my town and everyone I knew was incinerated by a bomb, launched by faceless men half a world away, for reasons I could not yet begin to fathom.
I made up my mind, right there, on the spot, I remember the moment with crystal clarity, That I was never calmly walking into anybodies gas chamber, EVER!!! and that I would one day understand, the how and why, that would lead someone in a far away land to want to kill myself and those I loved.
I suppose you could call that awareness.