Photographer/veterans' advocate releases controversial video in honor of Memorial Day

Grand Rapids photographer releases controversial YouTube video in honor of Memorial Day
Published: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 5:30 PM Updated: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 7:02 PM
By Brittany Shammas | The Grand Rapids Press


GRAND RAPIDS - A controversial video featuring children fighting and dying as soldiers at war has been released by a Grand Rapids photographer in tribute to Memorial Day.

David DeJonge, a veterans' advocate and award-winning photographer known for his project photographing the last living World War I veterans, said he created the film to cause Americans to reflect on the sacrifices and costs of war, and what soldiers go through during battle and the rest of their lives.

The footage, originally shot two years ago for a class project assigned to DeJonge's son, then a fifth-grader, shows children wielding weapons and killing each other, reflective of the D-Day invasion. Special effects, including smoke and explosions, make the weapons appear real.

DeJonge, owner of DeJonge Studio in Grand Rapids, said he chose to feature children in the film to reflect the innocence lost in war, and how war permanently transforms Americans, soldiers and their families.

more...
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/05/grand_rapids_photographer_rele.html

The video can be viewed at the link above or at :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgJdsEA8kiU&feature=player_embedded

Those flashes of gunfire were their imagination.

As a kid I had mostly..nix that ONLY boys as neighbors and friends in the early elementary grades in my tiny neighborhood. About 5th grade is when the first two girls about my age moved into the neighborhood.

I had girls as visiting friends and relatives before that.

I've got to say. Games like War. And King of the Mountain were infinitely more entertaining than House - School - or god forbid Barbie.

So yeah. There is a little warrior born into all of us. It's why a kid will pick up a stick and go BangBang.

They don't understand the implications of it. No more than understanding that deliberately crashing toy cars means they understand that the people in those cars would die..

It's fun. That's all.

Edit to clarify one point.