There is
strength to be gained from remembering.
The ancient
Druids knew this, as did the Greek, and the Romans and the women of the
defeated Confederacy after the Civil War, all of whom made a practice of
strewing the graves of dead warriors with flowers. So did Britain's Prime
Minister William Gladstone, who I once intoned, "Show me the manner in which
a nation or a Community cares for its dead, and I will measure exactly the
sympathies of its peop1e, their respect for the Laws of the land, and their
loyalty to high ideals."
And the
Japanese, perhaps, know it, best.
I can still
taste the mix of warm rain and my tears as I stood on top of a Japanese
pillbox on the invasion beach of Saipan in 1973, staring out. into the
emerald lagoon and distant reef from whence came two divisions of American
Marines, 29 year and two wars before. I had arrived on the island on the
anniversary of the invasion, which took place two years before my birth, and
found it still littered with the artifacts of war: rusted hulks from landing
craft, pillboxes buried to their firing apertures in sand, thick jungles
filled with weapons and helmets and dud artillery rounds.
In the lagoon
itself, two American tanks; sat forever frozen in the attack, clanking war
machines that had become tombs for youths making their way onto the beaches
of this unknown, isolated spit of coral. The young Marines in the tank, as
well as 3,400 other Americans over the space of three weeks, had given the
ultimate, irretrievable gift to the culture that had nurtured them.
Later, sitting
in a hotel restaurant filled with Japanese tourists, I wondered whether the
events of the ensuing years could justify their deaths. How would I have
explained to them on June 15, 1944, that within a generation the very nation
they died helping to defeat, whose soldiers aimed the artillery piece that
shot them dead, would economically dominate their battleground and graveyard
under the protection of their own military? How would they have reacted if I
could have predicted for them that their metal coffin would become a
conversation piece for the children of their defeated enemy. "History,"
wrote T. S. Eliot, "has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and
issues." And the unimaginable becomes unexplainable.
The Japanese, I
think, groped with this question from the other end of the dilemma: how
could a nation beaten on the battlefield find meaning and momentum in the
events of its defeat, while at the same time renouncing war? The answer,
predictably for their culture, lay in their war dead. The Japanese renounced
war but embraced their warriors. It was as if each death involved a transfer
of energy, the soul of the soldier feeding into the soul of the nation,
until the very enormity of Japan's defeat became itself the fuel for its
post-war emergence.
Japanese
monuments are familiar sights on Saipan, some of them constructed at great
cost by private citizens. Shinto prayer sticks dedicated to dead Japanese
from those long-ago war years gather like choked weeds at intersections
throughout the island. I drove to Suicide Cliff, where thousands of Japanese
jumped to their deaths rather than surrender, and watched in awe as one of
-Japan's many "search teams" sifted through the dirt at the bottom of the
cliff, patiently collecting flecks of bones in order to give ancestors and
friends a proper Shinto burial. By contrast, the only American monument was
a small cross with a helmet on top, erected in the early 1950s, which stood
forlornly in front of the local Toyota dealership.
By making this
distinction between a failed war and their dedicated warriors, the Japanese
have illustrated the spiritual power of commemoration and the nobility of
military service. Nations make war; soldiers merely fight them. Win or lose,
in a modern environment war represents the failure of the political process
to manage its external affairs. Win or lose. war represents a nation's most
dreadful and costly human investment, in both immediate and long-term
effects. And win or lose, war is sometimes unavoidable if a nation is to
maintain its ideals and place in the worlds community. So how do we balance
these anomalies. and how do we repay those who have been called upon to
defend the interest of our larger whole?
We begin by
remembering, and we remember, collectively, on Memorial Day.
Formalism does
not come easy, to Americans. We are ethnically diverse, historically
unsettled and irreverent. We were founded on the notion that authority is to
be suspected rather than worshipped, and that same casualness carries over
into our sense of country. H. L. Mencken once dryly noted that "it is as
impossible for a civilized man to love his country in good times as it would
be for him to respect a politician," and there may be a morsel of truth in
that. Memorial Day weekend is a time to go to the beach, to watch the
Indianapolis 500, or to have friends over for a barbecue. In 1971, we
conveniently made the holiday fall always fall a Monday in order to
accommodate such frolic.
But I would
hope that all of us might pause at some moment during the weekend and
contemplate the pain and energy, and yes, the sacrifice that bought us this
full day of leisure. From those remembered acts and from such
contemplations, comes the truest sense of country.
