Remembering the Fallen

It's Memorial Day in the U.S. today.

Here in Japan, whenever PM Koizumi or anyone else in the government tries to honor those that have paid the ultimate price in the service of their country, both Koreas and China immediately go ballistic and set diplomacy back several notches for a period of several months. Of course, it doesn't help that the Shinto shrine dedicated to the nation's war dead, Yasukuni Shrine, not only enshrines class A war criminals but officially (and quite vocally) supports both Imperial Japan's brutal colonialism and the Pacific War as both "noble" and "sacred" endeavors. Yes, I can understand how China and the Koreas would have a problem with that.

Even so, I still can't help feeling that honoring those who have died in the service of their country is both a matter of course and a natural right of any sovereign nation. It doesn't matter who was giving the orders or whether the war was justified or not. These were all men and women who were called upon to leave their homes and families and serve their people. Therefore, their people should honor their memory. Cultures that were brutalized by Imperial Japan should remember what happened and should be angry, but they shouldn't try to interfere with this most basic right.

After all, many people consider the Vietnam War a terrible, atrocity-laden mistake, yet we don't forget the Americans who lost their lives in that conflict. I certainly hope we won't ever forget those who have died (or may yet die) in our latest costly error endeavor. Whatever the leaders at the time may have been thinking, those soldiers still died for us, so we must remember them.

With that in mind, I've decided to make my contribution by offering a poem in the traditional Japanese tanka (32-syllable) style:

Wareware no michi wo     我々の道を
Mamotte ita tsutsuji　　　守っていた躑躅
Ima kurai ha dake　　　　　今暗い葉だけ
Hana mada mieru　　　　　　花まだ見える

[translation:]
The tsutsuji (Japanese azalea) that guarded our path,
Now only darkened leaves,
I can still see the flowers.

I hope we remember to see them again every year.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone!