Pillar Of Fire (April 7,1945) Poem by John F. McCullagh

Like a hungry Bear beset by bees,
with its paw caught in a honeyed trap.
The pride of the Japanese surface fleet
Reeled from the Americans' attack
The Yamato lurched and began to list.
The Americans closed in for the kill;
Torpedoes were set for Twenty feet,
They gave that ship a belly full.
Like Arizona, in Forty one,
Fire spread to her magazine.
A pillar of fire: two thousand feet high,
marked the moment the Yamato died.
Three thousand souls had been aboard;
Three hundred fought the oil slicked waves.
Her captain went down with his ship-
Only a relative handful of men were saved.
The battleship had seen its day
Yamato was the last to fall.
Now she sleeps two thousand feet deep
And colorful coral covers all.