[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 156 (Tuesday, October 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14945-S14947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THIS IS V-J DAY
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, over the last 4 years, much has
already been said and done to pay tribute to our Nation's veterans of
World War II. However, because this tribute is so special, I come
forward today to bring to the attention of this body the late Judge
Maurice Sapienza's poem, ``This is V-J Day.''
The late Judge Sapienza was born on October 10, 1915, and died on
April 6, 1991. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School,
Judge Sapienza was not only a distinguished legal scholar, but a noted
poet who edited several anthologies of verse. Judge Sapienza composed
``This is V-J Day'' in 1945, and dedicated it to the memory of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was read over the radio on
September 2, 1945, and subsequently published.
As we come to the end of the period of commemorating the 50th
anniversary of World War II, I think it is very appropriate for this
body to contemplate Judge Sapienza's moving words. Therefore, I ask
that Judge Sapienza's poem be printed in the Record.
The poem follows:
This Is V-J Day
(By Maurice Sapienza)
LISTEN:
This is the voice of your country:
I am the United States of America.
From my infancy up to this great, victorious day,
I have been proud of my officers and men.
They have trained my strength,
They have guided my way to Victory again
And forced the Rising Sun to set.
Now never again shall I forced to rout
This treacherous enemy.
Look, do you see my ships?
Listen, do you hear my guns?
Let the world see and hear me.
I have a story to tell.
Do you remember December, 1941?
Do you remember Pearl Harbor?
Let us go back to December 6, 1941.
Almost all my ships were there
In Pearl Harbor.
They were snugly anchored
Beam to beam, stern to bow,
Proud, strong, and safe.
Safe? Yes, the Pacific was a safe sea.
There was no threat to meet.
That afternoon, my chiefs
Were somewhere. Someone said
One was playing golf.
I am not sure.
Someone said one was given a note
To alert me from attack.
But he must have known
There was no danger
For he let me slumber in my anchorage.
My men had confidence in me.
They went to parties that night.
They had a good time.
Many hosts
[[Page S 14946]]
Were entertaining them.
Their bars flowed freely with the best.
I had no cause to worry.
That night, a strange message went out.
A call to Tokyo was made.
Our monitors were alert.
They saw nothing to arouse them.
In the message:
``The hibiscus is in bloom''
It was true. The hibiscus blooms all year.
It is the flower of Hawaii.
It is a beautiful flower
And colors this peaceful paradise.
The next day came early.
It was Sunday, December 7, 1941.
Do you remember that morning?
Come back there with me.
Look, the sun was rising;
It cast its slanting light
Above the ragged mountain rims,
Until its light-columns settled on the surfaces
And slowly started on their daily
March across the earth.
Down the green slopes they came,
Across the valleys studded with pineapples--
Across the fields of sugar cane,
Over Schofield Barracks and Waianae,
Where Marines and Army men slumbered,
To Wheeler Fields, drying the dew
On planes and landing strips.
They slowly advanced
Toward low-lying Pearl Harbor,
Where my ships, in domino-rows,
Snuggled close to each other.
It was a peaceful scene
That the rays of the sun disclosed.
I watched the island birds
Open their eyes, stretch and shake their wings,
Before starting their forage for food.
I saw a few of them
Wing skyward slowly.
As I looked about
I saw that dawn
Had stirred the wing-men
At Hickam Field.
Mechanics were towing their planes
Into the landing strips,
Spinning slow propellers,
Pouring gasoline into the empty tanks,
And warming motors for the take-offs.
Men were moving listlessly
Inside my ships
And in the B.O.Q.s beside them.
Somewhere near,
An Army Private
Turned the bowl-shaped antennas
Of the Radar he loved.
Radio pulses were beaming out
As he watched the oscilloscope screen
Register the homing-pigeon pulses,
Splash fluorescent wakes of tiny lights
On the mirror screen
He saw the unseen terrain
Flash in view;
The coastline, the harbor,
My ships, and the mountains.
Some of the pulses beat sky-ward.
Squadrons of planes scurried them back
With tell-tale report.
It was a moment of indecision then--
A moment that rises in the history of man
With a message of significance to the alert;
A moment that heralds the tides of fate
And challenges the wisdom of man.
In such a moment, he made his report:
``Unidentified planes approaching''
It was a terse report.
It met a terse reply:
``Friendly planes expected.''
The hum of his radar transmitter
Drowned in the drone
Of approaching planes.
The rays of the sun
Moved on unconcerned.
The quietness of the day of rest
Neglected the crescendo tones.
SUDDENLY
Bombs burst on earth.
I looked over the Harbor:
Planes were everywhere,
Zooming and screaming,
Unloosening tiny specks
That grew larger and larger
Until they burst in fire and thunder.
Wheeler Field, Hickam Field,
Both were writhing in flames.
Then hell broke loose.
The savage fury of violent death
Shook my ships
And tore gaping, mangled holes within my decks.
I had no steam to run.
I could only shudder and groan,
As bombs struck home.
There were some ships
That stung away some planes.
My men were all confused.
Death snatched them by the handful.
Some fired back.
Many never had the chance to move.
One by one my ships began to sink.
My men were perishing in flame and smoke.
One of my ships made the sea
And zig-zagged away from falling bombs.
One ship shuddered
When a fast torpedo
Bit into her side
And tore her flesh wide open;
But her 50-caliber guns
Gallantly blazed at once,
And her heavier guns
Swung up and fired away.
No plane got through
The wall of steel she blazed upright.
It was not long before the flames and smoke
Had blotted out the sun
And cast a pall of grimness on Pearl Harbor.
And the petals of ``hibiscus''
That was in ``full bloom''
Lay shattered and still
At the bottom of the sea.
How much more do you want to see?
Do you think that I will ever forget
My wounds, my deaths?
Oh, but I do not grieve my loss of ships:
They were salvaged soon
And put to sea
With the steam of anger at full speed.
It is the pain and death my men have suffered
That hurts me most.
There, above the Harbor,
Stands a hill.
It is a hill full of red earth
That some volcano upheaved
In its gasping throes.
That red earth is red dirt, red dust.
But in it lies a richer dust,
A dust that gashed vermillion
When the reaper plowed
His sudden harvest.
I see that hill there now.
It is a hallowed hill
That stares up to the sky
And bares a chest of crosses--
They are the white medals of men
Who died with and around me--
And I grieve because
They cannot be raised and salvaged
To stand upon my decks again.
They were gallant and brave.
And wherever I go,
They shall be my gods.
Can you hear me,
You who are there beneath that earth,
You who went down in my ships,
You who went skyward in planes
And plummeted to your graves in flames,
You who fired your guns until the last--
LISTEN
I am your Country.
And I have welded the Army, Navy, and Air Force to a oneness,
Into the most powerful weapon
This world has ever seen.
Listen to me just this once:
I will never forget you.
I have tried to avenge you.
Remember the Coral Sea,
And remember what I did at Midway:
My T.B.F.s
Covered torpedoes with their fusilage
And made the Japs
Think they were just ordinary fighters.
Did you see them hold their fire
Until torpedoes flashed to them
And bit with savage reprisal
Into their steel bellies?
O, you who died,
Listen
I put my fighting marines
Ashore on Guadalcanal
With an umbrella of steel.
I took death by the hair
And flung him
Across the Solomons,
Attu, Kiska,
Lae, Wake Island,
Tarawa, Makin,
Across the Central Pacific,
To Kwajalein, Eniwetok,
Across Tokyo in B-29s,
Then to Saipan, Tinian,
Guam, Peleliu,
The Philippines, Leyte, Luzon,
Iwo Jima--there on Mt. Suribachi
We planted my Stars and Stripes Forever--
Okinawa, the Jap Coast.
I did not forget you,
Nor did I forget those living now,
For we dropped two atomic bombs
And brought Russia into the fight
That we, and our Allies, were waging.
Listen,
Those dwarfs of the north
No longer gloat
Quick-filled with conquest;
They cowered in terror
As steel and death
Struck simultaneously
Into their thin veneer of civilization.
They believe in Shinto,
And combined
A spiritual and temporal power
And altered it upon a man
Who was saved from the shadows of the Shoguns
By their warrior caste.
They died by the thousands
To glorify their emperor-god.
They preferred death to surrender.
And we flung death
At them as fast as we could
Until we took the secret of the Universe
And threatened,
In the splitting of the infinite,
To crush them with blast of kingdom-come.
Can you still hear me?
Listen,
Today the Japs have formally surrendered.
It is V-J Day!
We have won.
The war is over.
The world is at peace.
And we have vowed
To lift the living world
To new horizons,
Where Peace stands up against the sky,
And the sword
Lies brittle-broken at its feet.
And you who fought and live,
LISTEN:
Time will never choke with dust
This voice that breaks the skies asunder
And challenges God
To blot out of the living mind
[[Page S 14947]]
The writhing bodies on fire,
The relentless pain of dying,
The screaming agonies,
The sudden death,
Or to mild the bitter hatred
That burns within the hearts of those
Who lost their friends and relatives.
Let God judge the dead--
We shall judge the living enemy
So that never again
Shall barbarism rise,
And never again
Shall living hearts
Bear such griefs.
And you who did not fight but live,
LISTEN:
Those of you
Who profited from this war:
These words and the dead
Shall seek you out,
And lay their ghostly hands
Upon your hearts
And hold them fiercely,
Cursing the thing you were and are;
For on your hands
Is a stain
No conscience
Will forget.
And you,
O Statesmen,
LISTEN:
Let us not forget the price we paid:
The blood soaked land and sea, the unmarked grave,
The splintered death of treacherous air-raid,
The prayers of those who trusted in God to save.
And let us not forget the crimes of those
Who talked of peace, then turned to treacherous ways.
Judge hard, and send them to a damned repose,
With crosses down to warn all future days.
We are the living counterpart of the dead
Who raise their Cross in silent silhouette
Against the sky for all the world to see.
Let us resolve to resurrect these dead
That they may judge the crimes through us. And let
Them write, O Statesmen, Their Peace, Their Victory!
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