This evening, while driving at work, I turned on the truck radio for a weather/traffic report. After a while the station aired a brief segment from a call-in talk show earlier in the day. The topic was in regard to Time Magazine's idea of using the famous Iwo Jima flag raising photo, with a tree in place of the US Flag. Their reasoning was to call attention to 'global warming'.
As one would imagine, it sounds like it stirred up a fire storm of heated debate surrounding 'sacrilege' and disgrace.
Then I got to thinking about it. You know there was a time when Dale would have been right in there flag-waving like crazy.
Not anymore.
Put all the politics aside. Forget the hero worship. Forget global warming.
Sixty-three years ago, over 26,000 US Marines and Soldiers were killed or wounded in the invasion of Iwo Jima. Nearly all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders were killed during the month long battle.
(As a side note, to attempt to illustrate the intensity of that horrific battle, I recently read a couple books on the subject. A correspondent who was on that beach later said, "Running through the hail of bullets and not getting hit, was like trying to run through rain and not getting wet." Another book related the story of one who returned to that island many years later, and remarked how the volcanic sand was "red", and upon closer inspection realised that the SAND was not red. It was simply a beach covered in rusted bullets and shell fragments!)
My guess is that if those young men lost on that island were able to talk to us today, that most of them would think a living, blossoming tree a far better memorial than a rusty flag pole.
Here is my memorial. For them.
