As Caruth went over the story of the French woman and Japanese man in Hiroshima mon amour, she examine many of the concepts of trauma that she wrote about in the previous chapter. In the previous chapter, she wrote how trauma has that reciprocal relationship where each member relys on the other to fully understand their own trauma and comes to terms with. The Japanese man didn't fully understand his past but by listening to his French lover, he was able to understand it. The French woman couldn't distinguish between life and death, so when he ask her a question about the cellar he included himself "when you are in the cellar, am I dead?". It was hard for her to forget her German lover while she was in the cellar. It caused her to go crazy. But once she was able to forget him, she was able to fully understand what had happened.
Vonnegut wrote the story of Billy being in Dresden when it was destroyed but having forgotten it until his and his wife's 18th wedding anniversary. At that particular moment when the four band member where singing "That Old Gang of Mine" did it all come back to him. But it took him a little while to figure out why he was so upset. What I kinda don't understand is why he forgot about Dresden. Yes, the French woman needed to forget to save her sanity and to fully understand. I wonder if Billy lost someone at Dresden or something horrible happened to him.
This is link to some images of Dresden during and after the bombing. http://images.google.com/images?q=dresden+bombing&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title
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