Pearl Harbor: A Place of Surprising Conversion

On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a devestating strike against the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 2,403 people died in the attack, and it propelled America into a World War that had been going on for two years already. The attacking aircraft were lead by Mitsuo Fuchida, a veteran combat pilot and tactical genius. No other man in the Imperial armed forces could have so deftly executed what was concieved by the brilliant Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; nor could any have agreed with him more readily that if the attack failed, a sleeping giant would be awoken. We all know how the attack on Pearl Harbor ended. Admiral Yamamoto knew his element of surprise was gone and withdrew the third wave and he knew that he had failed to take out the U.S. carriers which had not been in port. He also knew, that if he had not knocked the Pacific Fleet out fully, then the United States would seek revenge and turn its industrial might towards war. However, there was a side to this seventy year old story that I had never heard before. This morning I picked up my little blue Advent devotions book to find myself learning not more of the history of World War Two, but rather of the history of salvation and how it could be found in the ruins of the Pacific Fleet. Now, I want to quote it at length:

Seventy years ago today, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese pilot Mitsuo Fuchida led an early morning air assault on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The assault claimed 2,403 U.S. lives. After Pearl Harbor, Fuchida returned to Japan and continued to help his country's war effort. When the war ended, he learned he was the only one of the 70 Japanese officers participating in the Pearl Harbor raid who had not been killed in action during the war. The news shook him. He became a recluse and took up farming near Osaka. A friend, recently released from an American prison camp, told Fuchida that in the camp he had met a young woman whose missionary parents had been executed by the Japanese in the Philippines. After overcoming her bitterness, she decided to minister to Japanese prisoners of war in the United States -- visiting them, bringing magazines, caring for the sick. Fuchida was touched by her story. Then Fuchida came upon a pamphlet written by Jacob Deshazer, an American bombardier who had been shot down during Doolittle's raid on Tokyo in 1942. He had been captured and tortured by the Japanese. But during his imprisonment, Deshazer turned to the bible and gradually learned to forgive his captors. In 1948, he returned to Japan as a Methodist missionary. Deshazer's story inspired Fuchida, a Buddhist, to purchase a bible. In 1950, Fuchida converted to Christianity. He later became an evangelical missionary and lectured extensively in Japan, and to Japanese-Americans in San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles. On May 30, 1976, Mitsuo Fuchida died at the age of 75.

The friend who had been released was an old one to Fuchida, Kazuo Kanegasaki, his favorite flight engineer. he had been believed killed by the Imperial navy at the Battle of Miday, but instead found himself captured and sent to a camp where he was tended to by the young woman mentioned above, Peggy Covell. In May of 1950, after his conversion to Christianity, Fuchida would meet Jacob (or Jake as he preferred to be called) Deshazer in person and listen to his story for himself. The man who helped bomb Pearl Harbor would become lifelong friends with a man who bombed Nagoya, putting behind the pains of the past. 1959 would see Jacob move for thirty years to Nagoya, to establish a church in the city he had bombed, as part of the healing process. Fuchida meanwhile, began to tour the United States in 1952 as a part of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. February of 1954 would see Fuchida's account of the attack on Pearl Harbor published by the widely disseminated magazine Reader's Digest. he would go on to write a number of books and tracts ranging from an account of Midway from the Japanese point of view to perhaps, his most famous missionary work, From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha (aka From Pearl Harbor to Calvary). Fuchida would die at the age of 75 from complications from diabetes, but even today, the work he did both in the scope of war and the scope of faith lives on. Most people who recall his name, will remember him as the man who coordinated the aerial assault on Pearl Harbor; however to some, he will be remembered as the man who lead them to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. (hey blogger, why aren't you saving my formatting. The giant run-on paragraph is disgraceful.)