A dragon on the wing

Niitakayama nobore. Climb Mount Niitaka -- the highest mountain in Japan.

Those words were sent 58 years ago by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from the Japanese battleship Nagato, and forever changed our world. This was the signal that ordered the Japanese Carrier Strike Force to attack Pearl Harbor on this date in 1941.

On this same date, other branches of the Japanese Imperial Navy also attacked Guam, the Phillipine Islands, Midway Island, and numerous other targets in the Pacific. From a purely military standpoint, the day was a smashing victory for the Japanese. From a humanistic standpoint, it painted them in many people's eyes as cold-blooded, honorless murderers.

The loss of life from that sneak attack was considerable -- and yet without it, the US probably would not have gotten involved in WWII until much later... possibly too late to have prevented an Axis victory.

I can't know what would be different about 2009 if that day in 1941 hadn't happened the way it did. I can't know whether we'd be better off, or worse. All I can do is raise my glass in rememberance of those who fell that day, and those who fought and fell in the days after, and try to do my best with the world of 2009.

To those who fell on that day seven years ago, and who have fallen since as a result of that day...

I wish that I could somehow apologize to you for the outrageous things that have been done in the name of your memory.

Dammit. I know that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it, but most they doom the rest of us as well?

I showed this to several of my cow-orkers. (And no, that's not a typo. After today, they deserve that moniker.) While they understood that it was about Veteran's Day / Armistice Day, not *one* of them understood what "that red thing on the desk" was.

And only two of them had even heard of Flanders Field. Thank you, shrewreader, for posting the full verse.

Can I be ashamed of these people now?