These poems are part of the special section, “Poems of U.S. History”, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

There were always two true Blues—
both, first cousins to our Grami.

Both, enlisted in World War II,
but only one returned.

Captain Bluford Daniel survived
The Bataan Death March—

the torture, illness, starvation.
Watching beheadings. He survived

two and a half years, transferring
between POW camps. He survived

Cabanatuan. If he’d been left,
he could have been liberated

nine months before being moved
from Davao to the Arisan Maru.

On October 11, 1945, over 1780 troops
boarded the hell ship. Blue survived

in a hold that reached a sweltering 120º
without water, standing room only, and

overflowing oil cans of dysentery waste.
He survived as thirteen days passed. Then,

the USS Shark sub torpedoed the Arisan Maru
with Blue and sunk them. Some men,

maybe Blue, escaped the hold and swam
with sharks to reach the Japanese destroyers.

True to their name, they pulled away
leaving sick men to struggle to survive.

More than 1770 POWs died. Blue, like
them, and everyone on the Shark submarine,

sunk, drowned, and disappeared
from America, for America, forever.

Abbie Mulvihill is a recently retired US federal government information professional living in the Washington, DC area. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry blog’s “Pick of the Week,” Innisfree Poetry Journal, Anacapa Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and others. Additionally, poems of Abbie’s will be published in the forthcoming, North Coast Voices and Capital Love anthologies.

Featured image Royian, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons