Rice harvest past

Dateline: Saitama Prefecture, Japan; October 2, 2012--I have lived for 26 years in Alabama, a state that never even registered in my consciousness as even being a remote possibility of being called home. It is too hot in the summer, and hopelessly humid. Fire ants erupt out of mounds to spread fire up your legs and when, not if, they gain entrance to your home, will take souvenir snippets of your laundry back to their queen, leaving especially your white bits, riddled with holes. Armadillos do the same for the yards at night, sniffing out the plump nymphs that somehow live in clay rich and nutrient poor soil, leaving the yard looking like a tee on a municipal golf course. We also have hurricanes on occasion, but nothing like I have experienced here in Japan.

Of course, in Japan hurricanes are called typhoons but that’s where the difference ends, unless the wee fact is mentioned that a typhoon is generally stronger than a hurricane. I believe I have experienced the effects of a typhoon every time I have come to Japan. Two nights ago we were caught in the fringes of yet another. It was a great afternoon when we set out for the Hard Times store, Japan’s thrift store equivalent. While browsing the Japanese cast-offs, it began to rain and rain some more. The rain changed directions from vertical to horizontal, turning the roads into turbulent sluiceways. It was good to be off the roads and out of the deluge when we finally sailed home. Like my mother, I love storms, and the melancholy moaning of the wind calls to my heart in some primal way. But such reverie was short-lived as I discovered that my window had been left open about three inches and my desk, which occupies a spot directly under the window. Everything was soaked. My brand new computer, which I had left open, was covered with raindrops. How thankful I was that, before leaving the States, I had bought a plastic keyboard cover. The ants in the Philippines which had fled from my poking fingers down through the spaces under the keys, shorting them out, had prompted me to buy such protection. Not one drop made it into the gliibleyworks. My wireless mouse didn’t fare so well. But I am thankful to still have my computer working.

From these mountains they came

Typhoons blow hard here. I live in basically an apartment over a storage room. It is not much more than four walls enclosing two floors. It is hotter in hot weather and then colder in cold weather than the outside ambient temperature. But I love it. This night, the night of the tail of the typhoon, the building shook like a trembling beast, moans coming from above, below and all around. It was quite a ride. And then, as if it had drawn its last breath, all was still. Great lullaby.

I somethings forget what nostalgic roads I have wandered with those who read my blogs, so I might be wandering over some familiar territory this evening. Forgive the repetition or you are welcome for the reiteration, whichever one fits. But I am in Japan and many emotions rise within me while over here. 

The war had not been over quite two years when I was born. My uncle, Marine Staff Sergeant Gordon Miller, had been lost flying out of Guadalcanal a little over four years earlier. My uncle George Martin, we call him Bud, had returned from the war having survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and flown the Hump as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. My parents, both former Marines, were scratching out a living on a farm in Harrison, Ohio. And the terrible wounds, some of which would never be salved, began to slip into the past. I only saw this from the American perspective. But over here, in Japan, people hurt too. As I travel past the mountains, across the plains, wend my way through the rice fields, I realize these aging homes also sent their sons off to war.

My uncle was a poet and a poem was found in his effects after he went missing. As a child growing up, I loved this simple yet profound poem. I would read it, then finger his Purple Heart and other medals, wondering what he was like. I have always missed him. But how many of the ancients do I see here, bent down under a load of years and as inscrutable as is the national wont, still carry the scars of such a devastating war? What happens to the soul of a generation which has seen such destruction of the very flower of its youth? And if I sent it out before, well here it is again. It is just that running past the rice fields day by day, seeing the people laboring to bring in the harvest, I hear en echo.

The Sons of War

They knelt upon tatami mats

And drank their Saki down;

Tomorrow they would leave their homes

To serve the flag and crown.

They left their mountain hamlet towns,

They left the rice-green plain;

Those precious sights, they knew somehow,

Would not be seen again.

Honshu gave her finest youth,

Kyushu offered more;

Hokkaido and Shikoku both

Consigned their sons to war.

Mother’s wept, as mothers do,

While watched inscrutable

The fathers, as their sons, their heirs,

Fed Ares’ crucible.

And swelling past the rising sun,

Beyond the beckoning deep,

The tide of war crashed on the shore

With thunderous marshaling beat.

The Pearl in the Pacific felt

The first of conflict’s waves;

And ushered souls, too soon, into

Two thousand watery graves.

Then from Pacific’s coasts across

To Atlas’ shores they rose;

The finest youth, the nation’s blood,

Marched bold into war’s throes.

Two worlds of youth, of boys-cum-men,

Met on broad fields of fire;

And fought to gain the victory

To which both would aspire.

Alas, but one who struggled there

Could gain the victor’s prize;

But win or lose, it cost the same;

The blood of countless lives.

Long after war was swept away,

And friends were made of foes,

Still lie the bones ‘neath sea and sod,

Still stand the cross’ed rows.

It seems past conception that modern man would still seek to solve his differences by such barbarianism. But mad men have always found their way to the top, where they have looked down on their subjects and ordered them into untimely graves merely to fulfill their ambitions. And now Islam, as Catholicism did of old, seeks to subjugate the world through force of arms. And still the young men march off to war. To the allies serving their countries in this current struggle against the evils of insane religions fervor, I salute you and pray for you.

Farewell to Friends

When I was young and time was too,

I couldn’t wait till school was through;

For Summer held a thousand charms,

So rushed I to her waiting arms.

In her embrace we wiled away

Each long and happy school-less day;

I had no cares, no math, no verbs;

No book reports nor scolding words.

The fragrance of the new mown grass,

July the fourth’s bright fireworks’ flash;

The swimming pool at Oakley Park,

The lightening bugs once it was dark.

The ice cream man still walked his beat,

The gaslights then still lit the streets;

We’d hotdogs grilled in dancing flames,

And played in gutters when it rained.

The time stood still for children then,

It seemed that youth would never end;

No cares could mar our happiness,

We thrived in childish blissfulness.

We could not see what lay ahead,

Except at night we’d go to bed,

To welcome in another day

Once the night had slept away.

But some of those back then I knew,

Who lived and laughed and quickly grew

Into the men who marched away,

Have long in soldier’s coffins lay.

I thank you each for what you shared,

The times we played, the times we dared;

For golden memories long ago,

What it meant you’ll never know.

You may have slept in Flanders lea,

Or lay you down at Normandy;

On Iwo’s sands you may have died,

Or stemming Chosen’s yellow tide.

Perhaps in Nam you met your end,

Where ‘ere it was, I miss you friend;

And still you march, and fight and die,

From Eastern sands you pass me by.

Farewell, farewell, to youth, to age,

There’s nothing decades can assuage;

But all you meant to me back then,

Will still be with me till my end.