The Man I Left Alive


moved in the rocks with inching fingers
among the feathery tall palms
and picked us off. We felt such anger
we wanted to charge in, but “Calm
yourselves the captain said, we’ll kill
this sniper. Scarecrows made of stuffed
uniforms, rifles for bones, filled
with grass and fronds seemed just enough
like men to make him waste his fire
and show us where to creep. One spurt
right in the gut. I left him there,
curled like a grub, took his gun for
a trophy. No, it wasn’t fair,
but I wanted to make him hurt.

         (American G.I., Tinian Island)

The Ball Turret Gunner


I track the zeros, naked to the sky
inside a sphere of plexiglass.
Because I’m small of stature, I
was put inside this ball of glass
like an old globe with miniatures,
except with guns---no white flock
or ocean scene as colors tear
the blue with tracer fire, black flak.
A pilot close enough to knife
me with his gaze dives like a seal
and I’m the shark. My two guns speak,
then stutter, and he keeps his life.
In the blue dome as time congeals
he swims off slowly, bleeding smoke.

         (American Gunner, B-17 Flying Fortress)

Beach Landing, Iwo Jima


They didn’t shoot at us. A silent scene
until we clogged the beach, and then—all hell,
potato masher hand grenades, machine
gun fire, artillery. I swear each shell
passed close enough you could reach up and catch
it like a ball. I crawled across black sand,
and used each corpse for cover. Don’t attach
yourself, is what I learned. Just go numb and
shove it all deep inside, and you’ll survive,
maybe, as I survived. I didn’t hate
the man who charged me with his bayonet.
I crouched and shot him dead so I could live.
But the photo in his helmet stabbed my heart.
A child, smiling at me. And then I wept.

         (U.S. Marine, Iwo Jima)

Seeds of Gold


They called me Harvester because each field
of dead Nips gave a crop of souvenirs
for me to gather. Good stuff, if you steeled
yourself to reap it. Still, I cried real tears
when Sergeant Bill took sniper shot right through
the eye. But why should I die, too? I’d fake
an injury, or disappear into
a cave until the fighting stopped, then take
the little metal hammer that I kept
inside my pack and knock the fillings out
of molars and bicuspids. You should see
the bag of teeth I bagged. It wasn’t theft.
The dead don’t shop. I say, when asked about
my wealth, “I got my start in dentistry.”

         (U.S. Infantryman, Iwo Jima)

The Pilot’s Tale


In the plane’s glass nose the whole sky
lit up the beautifulest blue,
you ever seen, bright blue, but I
did not react when the bomb blew.
Not right away. Then I turned round
and saw the cloud of boiling dust
bubbling upwards from the ground
where I guess Hiroshima must
have been, and felt the silver fillings
in my teeth, shocking me. They sent
the chills all through me, boots to hair.
We wiped ‘em out. And as for killing
the ones they say were innocent---
that's their tough luck for being there.

         (Pilot, Enola Gay)

Morning in Hiroshima


A morning beautiful and sweet,
and clad in undershirt and drawers
I watched my garden through the doors
flung wide, the sunlit, shimmering leaves.
Then the stone lamp lit up just like
a bright magnesium flare. I plucked
a large glass shard out of my neck
and looked at it. I called my wife
as the house sagged and began falling,
everything tumbling to the floor.
We ran out through the house next door
and tripped on something and fell sprawling.
We had tripped over a man’s head.
Excuse me, please! Excuse me, please!
I cried to him hysterically.
There was no answer. He was dead,
his body crushed beneath a large
red gate. I ran through the street bare.
Where were my shirt and underwear?
Our city was on fire, and our
neighbors walked around like ghosts,
their arms held straight out from their bodies.
Then suddenly I saw their bodies
had been burned black, that they were hold-
ing their arms out to stop the sting
of friction. Now a naked man
ran by. I couldn’t understand
what thing had happened, what strange thing.

         (Doctor, Hiroshima)

The Pit


The men who volunteered to cut off heads
were shocked by Hiroshima, and by the burned
cities. I helped because my wife was dead.
She burned alive. The captured pilots earned
this death. In a blank field, stripped to their shorts.
they watched us, blear-eyed. I think they knew it
before they saw the hole to hold their corpses.
We put on blindfolds, kneeled them by the pit.
I killed four, with a borrowed sword. To strike
just right is difficult. The neckbone stops
the blade. But Satano in one fast stroke
cut his off clean. We tried Karate chops
on them for practice, buried head and trunk
below the shallow dirt. Then we got drunk.

         (Japanese Officer, Western Army Headquarters)

My American Friends


have said the atom bomb will bring us peace.
Ash children, firestorms, the poison breeze,
will nauseate us like a greasy feast
so that we’ll learn to turn away and fast.
But this is like a child who eats too much.
He’ll stop—but only while his stomach hurts.


         (Mahatma Gandhi)