23 December 2003

'Tis the Season

It is the second day of winter and it is going to be 60 degrees here in the District. I may put the top down on the car and pretend that there are not three more months of apprehension, looking up for snow. In 1823, the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore was published, in the Troy Sentinel of New York State. It has since been the template for more amateur rhyme than any other, appearing in thousands of Christmas letters. "'Twas the night before Christmas…." they all start, and you know where it is going from there.

At least the letters have their charm, endearing in their embrace of our collective vision of the festive season. They are certainly better than "Osama Got Run Over By a Reindeer," a topical little number I heard with astonishment on the radio driving home last night.

It is also an anniversary of a sad event from the awful year of 1941. Britain was reeling against the onslaught of the Axis forces, Russia seemed on the verge of collapse. The American fleet was largely on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and Marines and Soldiers on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese. Some of them survived the war.

There is a curious confluence in the chronology of the Pacific War. Exactly seven years later former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo. Tojo is the only one I remembered off the top of my head. I didn't have much in common with the six, but I used to sit in the bar at the old Sanno Hotel in Tokyo where Tojo had leaped to the top of a bar table and proclaimed the glory of the Emperor and the establishment of a new military Shogunate to cement his eternal glory.

Tojo, Kenji Doihara, Koki Hirota, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Iwane Matsui and Akira Muto were hanged after being found guilty as Class "A" war criminals by the Far East Branch of the International Military Tribunal. The Japanese ripped down the buildings where the trials were held. There was some mild consternation about the relentless way they did it. Some said that something to commemorate the event should be retained. Their crimes were monstrous.

They are now enshrined at the Shinto temple of Yasukuni, and there is always mild consternation at the annual New Year's visit of the Prime Minister to visit them.

It is said that the Allies chose this day for the executions because it is also the birthday of the then crown prince Akihito who was 15 years old. That means he is 70 today and he is the Emperor of the line that goes back to Jummu Tennu.

I saw a relic advertised for auction a while ago that connected me, briefly, to them. It was a small white silk flag with the big red meatball in the middle. It was signed by the seven, and by eighteen others who were only convicted to lengthy prison terms. Each of them inked their names in English and Japanese and some added their rank or position.. The auction literature noted that similar sets of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg exist, but that a Japanese companion was exceedingly rare. The flag is matted and framed, some of the signatures are faded, but all are still quite legible, otherwise in near-fine condition. The Antique Road Show experts might appraise the piece for between two and three thousand bucks if it went to auction. It would be much more valuable if sold as a set with the German one, I imagine, though for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would want them.

In my time, 1968, I was a senior at East Grand Rapids high School when the eighty-two crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured. Some of them had been tortured for displaying the "good luck" sign of the extended middle finger in photo-documentation of their capture. Pueblo is still a commissioned ship of the United States Navy and it is also North Korea's People's Museum Number Five, unique in all the world. I don't know what it would bring if brought to auction.

It is a matter that cries out for resolution. Eventually.

But so many things do. I have a busy day. I need to call a guy and tell him I think he is swell but that I cannot hire him. The I have an interview with a kid I can hire for substantially less money, and a paper to write for the people at the Agency, interpreting a report to the Senate of the United States like I understood it. There is a meeting of the Council of Colonels over at Pentagon City later this afternoon, and I have to pick up the Marital Dog as my ex herds my towering sons onto an airplane for a trip to her family reunion in Texas. The dog and I will spend the holiday here, and I need to get him something nice to open under the plywood mock-pine I have festooned with tiny lights.

The Council of Colonels meets periodically to discuss the great events of the day. We are all in the age of transition,. Some are hanging on for a last tour, a little apprehensive about life out in the cold.

The retirement is almost enough to retire on, though not here. I have a little item to report, though I don't think I will being it up. I will wait and see if anyone noticed. I read a little piece on the BBC this morning, my voice emanating from Bush House in London while I lay looking up in my bed in Arlington. I was on in the second half hour, right after the report on the Philippine mud slides. They blame that event on over-logging.

I don't think they can find a direct cause for mine. 'Tis the season, after all.