[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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