Why do we dwell on the violence associated with World War II?

Question:
Why do we dwell on the violence associated with World War II? Is it necessary to focus so heavily on this violence? What purpose does it serve?
2.5 pages, use the sources from below to write the essay.
Source:
Chiang Kaishek and the Formation of a United Front in China

-“Political and Military Realities in Twentieth Century China: A History in Documents, 78-83
– “The Students Demonstrate, December 16, 1935”, “Xi’an 1936: the Generals’ Demands and Chiang Kai-shek’s Reply”, in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 304-313
– “On War with Japan” in Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press 1968), 106-113

The Outbreak of the War: From the Marco Polo Bridge to a Stalemate in Central China

– “Japan at War” in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 314-324
– “The Rape of Nanjing, Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection,324-330
– Diana Lary, “A Ravaged Place” in MacKinnon and Lary, eds. Scars of War: the Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press) 2001, 98-116
– “Battle Lines in China” , “ I wanted to Build a Greater East Asia”, in Japan at War: An Oral History, 29-44, 50-55
– Begin Factories of Death, 1-74

Resistance v. Collaboration in Occupied China

*“Generalissimo Jiang on National Identity” in Chinese Civilization: a Sourcebook, 401-404
*“Wang Jingwei : On Collaboration” in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 330-333
*“War, Nationalism and Identity” in China: Inventing the Nation, 207-223
*“Introduction” in Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: BasicBooks) 1997, 3-16

The Retreat to the Southwest and the Making of ‘Free China’

*“Chungking, a Point in Time” in White and Jacoby eds Thunder Out of China, 3-19
*“Bombs in Yishan” in Lau and Goldblatt, eds. Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press 2007) 633-638
* “Bombs Don’t Discriminate” in Flath and Smith, eds. Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press) 2011, 59-79
* Li Danke, Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China (Urbana: University of Illinois Press) 2010, 88-93
– Factories of Death, 75-177
February 23: Pearl Harbor and the Beginning of the War in the Pacific

* “Tojo on the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”,“Tojo Greets the Greater East Asia Conference, in Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II, 78-81, 88-93
* “A Failure of Diplomacy” in Japan at War: an Oral History, 90-95
* “The Justificiation for War” , “The Declaration of War” , “The War Goal” in Source of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, 288-298

War, Race and the Mobilization of the Japanese Empire

*“Chapter 3” in Richard Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley:University of California Press) 1998
* “Patterns of a Race War” in John Dower War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books) 1996, 3-14 [don’t have]
* “Imperial Army Betrayed” in Fujitani, White, Yoneyama, eds. Perilous Memories: the Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) 2001 [don’t have]
* “Korean Guard” in Japan at War, 113-120
Women and the War in East Asia
* “The Course and Conditions of the Establishment of the Military comfort Station System” in Yoshimi Yoshiaki Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II (New York: Columbia University Press) 2000, 42-75
* Ding Ling, “When I was in Xia village” Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature

The Rise and Near Fall of US-Chinese Relations

* Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kaishek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 194-244
* China White Paper, August 1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1967) 26-37
– Begin Cold Nights

The Chinese Communist Party at War

* Mao Zedong, “Establishment of Base Areas” in Strategic Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War (Beijing: Peking University Press) 1960, 26-42
* Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” in On New Democracy (Peking: Foreign Language Press) 1967, 72-114
* “First Formal Impression of the North Shensi Communist Base” and “Desirability of American Military Aid to the Communist Armies” in Joseph Esherick, ed. Lost Chance in China: the World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York: Random House 1974) 178-182, 322-326
– Continue with Cold Nights
* Herbert Dix, “Japan’s Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation” in Diplomatic history 19, no. 2, 197-225 [need to get]
* “The Burning Skies” in Japan at War, 343-353
– Continue Cold Nights