The ancient rice field
Mateo de Colón
Saturated by gray clouds
Of US warplanes above
Just walked through this beautiful landscape and was struck by the contrast of its timeless serenity and the roaring of the ceaseless American warplanes flying overhead towards Yokosuka. It is a melancholy feeling indeed and brought forth an unsolicited haiku.
Update 9.25.2015
I wanted to add more to this post. All day long military planes and helicopters are flying over Saitama which I assume are on their way to Yokosuka airbase. It is a strange thing to see your country’s (empire’s) aircraft flying over a sovereign nation. It has been this way since the end of World War II so the locals no longer seem to notice it.
I notice it however as seeing a military jet happens only two or three times a year here in Pacifica and usually is out over the ocean. I mentioned the frequency and how it was strange to me to my father-in-law and he said it was the “Self-Defense Force” which means Japanese but I highly doubt that. I think that is what the Japanese media tell the populace to ease the festering thorn of having a foreign power permanently on domestic soil.
Seeing so many military aircraft made me wonder about what goes on in the military world that isn’t reported. Everyday troops are moved, missiles realigned, strategies updated. The world we do not see is in a perpetual state of war ready to slaughter those unlike us. With all the reasons, propaganda and rhetoric are stripped away, the only reason we kill others in times of war is because they are of a different tribe or from a different land.
