Semper Fi

常に忠誠を (tsune ni chūsei wo): always faithful, the Marine Corps motto semper fidelis, adopted in 1883. 常に tsune ni is always; 忠誠 chūsei is loyalty, a faithful and honest heart, the word of 忠誠を誓う, to swear fealty; を marks it as the object, and the verb, to pledge or to render, is left unsaid, which is how Japanese turns a phrase into a vow. Latin has an adjective for the Marine's virtue and Japanese says the noun instead. The words have a Japanese home of their own, and it is a wartime one: they open the first article of a 1943 civilian creed modeled on the army's field code, where the citizen is told to hold loyalty always in mind. Honest Japanese for the motto, and a Japanese guest of a certain age will know where else the words were once written.