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The year was 1944, and I was 21A million miles from California, carrying a gunMy country sent me overseas to battle the Big RedI found myself in Burma with a helmet on my headThe countryside near Sittaung is serene and peaceful groundWhere towering teak trees touch the sky and bamboo shoots aboundBut on this day in '44, the sky was filled with fumesThe landscape stained with mothers' sons in bare, unearthly tombsThe victory was ours that day, I scanned the start terrainA flash of color caught my eye across this fruitless plainI knelt to find a piece of cloth beneath a fallen gunI took it as a souvenir, as if I'd ever need oneThe Allied Force prevailed and the war was winding downAnd still I had the souvenir I'd picked up off the groundThe cloth turned out to be flag, a silken rising sunI took it home to California when my tour was doneI showed the flag to friends and family, proof of how I'd servedI justified the Japanese had got what they deservedBut every time I took it out I felt a pang of guiltI thought of someone's growing boy, who'd grown up to be killedI found out that the flag was made by someone's loving handLetras de cancionesTo wish a strong and young soul well in Godforsaken landsI found a name and wondered if that's all that did surviveAnd now Koju Muramatsu, I've found out that you're aliveI can't express the flood of thoughts that rivet through my headFor forty years I thought the soldier of the flag was deadAnd now I've found out differently, I can't tell you how I feelToday a souvenir of war became someone so realThough common threads that bind us all afford the greatest costRegretfulness in retrospect won't make up for those lostI hope this finds you well and strong, I pray you comprehendThat somewhere in this twist of time there's a newly humbled manYour Rising Sun is shining bright in shimmering arrayYour flag of hope, and love, and lightReturns to you this day From Letras Mania