The Raid on Pearl Harbor
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It’s a day that most people don’t recall
But so many soldiers took the fall.
Too many died on that horrible day.
The survivors left alone to turn gray.
That peaceful morning, as calm as calm can be,
Met tragedies we thought we’d never see.
The world was at war. It wasn’t our fight.
It all changed, and it’d never be alright.
A land of beauty, such a paradise,
Would soon be held in Satan’s mighty vice.
The air filled with the ocean’s gentle breeze,
The enemy stole its tranquility.
The enemy came with a sneak attack,
And there was no time for us to react.
They struck like lightning, and they hit us hard.
For all the lives lost, they had no regard.
As quickly as they arrived, they were gone.
In this vicious assault just after dawn,
Our lost innocents, so wickedly killed,
Left us the voids that could never be filled.
The enemy flew, returned to the sea,
And left devastation for all to see.
The mission now: to rescue and to save
Every soldier who had postponed the grave.
When it had ended, there was but one thought:
Return the wrath the invaders had brought.
We weren’t a nation of peace anymore,
For the merciless pilots declared war.
My father manned a ship with torpedoes.
How he survived, not one of us could know.
He missed the vast hole that formed in the hull
But those he lost left voids so horrible,
A pain lifelong and unavoidable.
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Mary Derringer
A seventy-eight-year-old nursing home resident, she enjoys writing poetry as well as children’s stories. She has a degree in children’s literature from the Institute of Children’s Literature. She has three poems scheduled for publication in the Neopoet Around the World anthology. New to poetry, she has been excited to feel the gratification that comes with having your words valued.
