“FROM PEARL HARBOR TO CALVARY”

“From Pearl Harbor To Calvary”

He was born in obscurity for a day that would live in infamy.

DECEMBER 3, 1902, marked the birth in Nagao, Japan, of Mitsuo Fuchida. His story, told in his own words, reveals the mark he left on history—and the mark God left on him.

I must admit I was more excited than usual as I awoke that morning at 3:00 A.M. Hawaii time. . . . As General Commander of the Air Squadron, I made last minute checks on the intelligence information reports in the Operations Room before going to warm up my single-engine three-seater plane. . . .

The sunrise in the east was magnificent above the white clouds as I led 360 planes towards Hawaii. I knew my objective: to surprise and cripple the American naval force in the Pacific. . . .

Like a hurricane out of nowhere, my torpedo planes, dive-bombers, and fighters struck suddenly with indescribable fury. . . . It was the most thrilling exploit of my career. . . .

With the end of the war my military career was over. . . . I became more and more unhappy, especially when the war crime trials opened in Tokyo. Though I was never accused, General Douglas MacArthur summoned me to testify on several occasions.

As I got off the train one day in Tokyo’s Shibuya Station, I saw an American distributing literature. He handed me a pamphlet entitled “I Was a Prisoner of Japan.”

What I read . . . eventually changed my life. On that Sunday while I was in the air over Pearl Harbor, an American soldier named Jacob DeShazer had been on K.P. duty in an army camp in California. When the radio announced the sneak demolishing of Pearl Harbor, he shouted, “Jap, just wait and see what we’ll do to you!”

One month later he volunteered for a secret mission with the Jimmy Doolittle Squadron—a surprise raid on Tokyo. . . . After the bombing raid, they flew on towards China but ran out of fuel and were forced to parachute into Japanese-held territory. . . . During the next 40 long months in confinement, DeShazer was cruelly treated . . . but after 25 months the U.S. prisoners were given a Bible to read. . . . There in a Japanese P.O.W. camp, he read and read—and eventually came to understand that the book was more than a historical classic.

After DeShazer was released, he returned to Japan as a missionary and in God’s providence gave Fuchida the tract he had written. Fuchida continues:

The peaceful motivation I had read about was exactly what I was seeking. Since the American had found it in the Bible, I decided to purchase one myself, despite my traditional Buddhist heritage.

In the ensuing weeks I read this book eagerly. I came to the climactic drama—the Crucifixion. I read in Luke 23:34 the prayer of Jesus Christ at His death: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” I was impressed that I was certainly one of those for whom He had prayed. The many men I had killed had been slaughtered in the name of patriotism, for I did not understand the love that Christ wishes to implant within every heart.

Right at that moment I seemed to meet Jesus for the first time. I understood the meaning of His death as a substitute for my wickedness and so in prayer, I requested Him to forgive my sins and change me from a bitter, disillusioned ex-pilot into a well-balanced Christian with purpose in living. . . .

I believe with all my heart that those who will direct Japan—and all other nations—in the decades to come must not ignore the message of Christ. . . . He is the only hope for this troubled world.

Reflection

Mitsuo Fuchida came to know God personally through reading and studying the Bible, God’s message to humanity. Do you regularly read and study the Bible? It has the power to change your life just as dramatically as it did Mitsuo Fuchida’s.

Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.

Psalm 119:37