Banzai You Bastards!


That night we heard the echoes of his homeland,
the melancholic gospels of the valleys,
that brought fair peace to his impassioned mind,
and purpose born in hellish purgatory.

Without that choral splendour then and now,
He felt his anger rise to rage and burn,
at the trauma and injustice suffered,
by those unfree yet undefeated men.

Those righteous hymns and blessed songs lent strength
to his endurance in his slavery;
from the music of his childhood sprang hope
in Nippon's fetid mines at Kinkaseki.

Hope gave him the grace to bear the cruel scars,
shattered mind and unseen wounds poorly healed,
the damage of disease and foul neglect.
‘Keep Going The Spirit that Kept Us Going’.

Now, when he wrote with such righteous fury
across the page his treasured words to me,
I understood the fearful toll imposed
on him; the brutal cost of his memory.

His words to me are written clear:
‘None of us should forget!
Jack Edwards, Prisoner 159.’

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