Cave of the Virgins

This is a poem about a sacred place in southern Okinawa called "Himeyuri No To" (Cave of the Virgins). My poem details what happened there and explains why it is a sacred place. A memorium of mourning after the last battle of WWII.

Only fifty-one were left in our caves when the enemy surrounded us.
As nurses, we schoolgirls worked like slaves amongst torn bodies spouting blood and pus.
Imperial soldiers once so proud, serving the Emperor in his glory.
Now in darkness waiting for death’s shroud, the Rising Sun sets to end our story.
The army surrendered and abandoned us here and in the darkness of our cave we weep.
Once honored as Princess Lilies without fear, the sick and injured warriors we keep.
The Himeyuri girls, school of the elite, made nurses when Americans came.
Left in our cave with Japan’s shamed defeat, so too we share in the shame.
We began at two hundred or more, in the dark caves treating the dying.
Through damp dank death, we’ve crawled along the floors to tend those screaming and crying.
All the soldiers have gone, retreated or dead and fifty-one Princess Lilies remain.
Shouts for surrender echo from overhead and our fear drives us near insane.
We will not surrender in fear of our fate, as a gas bomb in our cave is sent. For any hope to live seems much too late, when the bomb explodes and lives are spent.
Only five survive from the blast and the gas, where hundreds lived as nurses and surgeons.
The horror of war at this spot would last, known forever as Cave of the Virgins.