A DAY OF INFAMY

A poem by Del "Abe" Jones

 

Around eight o’clock in the morn

In Nineteen forty-one

On December the Seventh

Our World War Two was begun.

We’d tried to stay out of it

And said, it was not our fight

But an attack by Jap aircraft

Made us look and see the light.

One hundred of our ships

Were docked at the Seaport

And planes parked all around

With Troops for their support.

The saddest part of the attack

Was, it was known an hour before

A Jap midget sub spotted and sunk

And that may have changed the War.

The crew of the USS Ward

Who had sent it down below

Radioed Pearl Naval Command

Who didn’t believe their story, so.

That one hour of warning

The Navy Brass failed to heed

May have saved so many lives

Maybe lost without need.

Some sixty-one years later

The truth was finally known

The sub found with the holes

Shells from the Ward had blown.

Some have said our Government

Knew of the attack beforehand

Some accounts hard to believe

And even harder to understand.

Almost twelve hundred wounded

Nearly twenty-four hundred died

Our Country shocked and outraged

While all of our People cried.

Twenty-one ships sunk or damaged

Plus more than three hundred planes

Wrecks strewn along the bottom

Which, still hold some remains.

Many years have come and passed

Since that day of infamy

With so many more battles waged

To help keep our Country Free.

So sad it takes War for Peace

But guess that’s the Human way

But seems there’s more time fighting

Than we spend with a Peaceful Day.