I recently finished reading Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers, an account of the Bataan Death March, life in a POW camp in WWII Cabanatuan, and the liberation of the survivors of the Death March and the POW camp by elements of the US Army’s 6th Ranger battalion during the liberation of the Philippines. The book is at times both disturbing and inspiring, a look at the best and worst that we do to each other. The prisoners – American, British, and other nationalities that were captured by the Japanese – were put through both active and passive forms of torture and, in many cases, treated no better than vermin by their captors. Disturbingly, the parallels between what happened in Cabanantuan and what has been done in our “war on terror” were much clearer than I would like them to be.

The book provided plenty of topics to research further, and one of them was Lt. Henry Lee. A 27-year old recruit from Pasadena, Lee was an amateur poet who continued to find ways to write while a prisoner of the Japanese. Even though Lee did not survive the war, he was able to bury his notebook in the Carbanatuan camp where it was recovered after the liberation of the camp. I find his poems to resonate with an emotional tension that give a small glimpse into his world.

Today’s poem was written by Lee as a response to his poem “Prayer Before Battle (To Mars)” and shows the changes he has undergone through three years of captivity.

“Three Years After” (December 8, 1944)

“Teach me to hate,” I prayed — for I was young,
And fear was in my heart, and faith had fled.
“Teach me to hate! for hate is strength,” I said
“A staff to lean on.” Thus my challenge flung
Into the thunder of the clouds that hung
Cloaking with terror all the days ahead –
“Teach me to hate — the world I loved is dead;
Who would survive must learn a savage tongue.”

And I have learned — and paid in days that ran
To bitter schooling. Love was lost in pains,
Hunger replaced the beauty in life’s plan,
Honor and virtue vanished with the rains
And faith in God dissolved with faith in man.
I have my hate! But nothing else remains.

– Lt. Henry G. Lee