LAST SD FOR Philemon

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/22/2017 1:40 PM

“[Fuchida] heard two stories about prisoners of war that filled him with excitement.  They seemed to illustrate the principle for which he was searching.

“The first report came from a friend—a lieutenant who had been captured by the Americans and incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp in America.  Fuchida saw his name in a newspaper, in a list of POW’s who were returning to Japan.  He determined to visit him.  When they met, they spoke of many things.  Then Fuchida asked the question uppermost in his mind.  ‘How did they treat you in the POW camp?’  His friend said they were treated fairly well, although they suffered much mentally and spiritually.  But then he told Fuchida a story which, he said, had made a great impression upon him and upon every prisoner in the camp.  ‘Something happened at the camp where I was interred,’ he said, ‘which has made it possible for us who were in that camp to forego all our resentment and hatred and to return with a forgiving spirit and a feeling of lightheartedness instead.’

“There was a young American girl, name Margaret ‘Peggy’ Covell, whom they judged to be about twenty, who came to the camp on a regular basis doing all she could for the prisoners.  She brought things to them they might enjoy, such as magazines and newspapers.  She looked after their sick, and she was constantly solicitous to help them in every way.  They received a great shock, however, when they asked her why she was so concerned to help them.  She answered, ‘Because my parents were killed by the Japanese Army!’

“Such a statement might shock a person from any culture, but it was incomprehensible to the Japanese.  In their society, no offense could be greater than the murder of one’s parents.  Peggy tried to explain her motives.  She said her parents had been missionaries in the Philippines.  When the Japanese invaded the islands, her parents escaped to the mountains in North Luzon for safety.  In due time, however, they were discovered.  The Japanese charged them with being spies and told them they were to be put to death.  They earnestly denied that they were spies, but the Japanese would not be convinced, and they were executed. 

“Peggy didn’t hear about her parents’ fate until the end of the war.  When the report of their death reached her, her first reaction was intense anger and bitter hatred.  She was furious with grief and indignation.  Thoughts of her parents’ last hours of life filled her with great sorrow.  She envisioned them trapped, wholly at the mercy of their captors, with no way out.  She saw the merciless brutality of the soldiers.   She saw them facing the Japanese executioners and falling lifeless to the ground on that far-off Philippine mountain.

“Then Peggy began to consider her parents’ selfless love for the Japanese people.  God had called them to love and serve.  Then it occurred to her that if her parents had died without bitterness or rancor toward their executioners, why should her attitude be different?  Should she be filled with hatred and vengefulness when they had been filled with love and forgiveness?  Her answer could only be, ‘Definitely not.’  Therefore she chose the path of love and forgiveness.  She decided to minister to the Japanese prisoners in the nearby POW camp as a proof of her sincerity.

“Fuchida was touched by this story, but he was especially impressed with the possibility that it was exactly what he had been searching for: a principle sufficient to be a basis for peace.  Could it be that the answer for which he was seeking was a forgiving love, flowing from God to man, and then from man to man?  Could that be principle upon which the message of his projected book, No More Pearl Harbors should be based?

“Shortly after this, Fuchida was summoned by General Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo.  As he got off the train at Shibuya station, he was handed a pamphlet entitled, ‘I was a Prisoner of Japan.’  It told about an American sergeant, Jacob DeShazer, who had spent forty months in a Japanese prison cell and who, after the war, had come back to Japan to love and serve the Japanese people by helping them to come to know Jesus Christ.

“Fuchida read the story with interest.  DeShazer had been a bombardier on one of the sixteen Army B-25 airplanes which, under the leadership of General Jimmy Doolittle, had been launched on 18 April 1942 from the deck of the USS hornet to bomb Tokyo.  None of the planes were shot down, but all of them ran out of gasoline before they could be landed properly.  The crew of five  they were captured and incarcerated for the duration of the war.

“DeShazer notes that all prisoners were treated badly.  He said that at one point he almost went insane from his violent hatred of the Japanese guards.  Then one day a guard brought him a Bible.  They were all in solitary confinement, so they took turns reading it.  When it was DeShazer’s turn, he had it for three weeks.  He read it eagerly and intensely, both Old and New Testaments.  Finally, he writes, ‘the miracle of conversion took place June 8, 1944.

“DeShazer determined that if he lived until the war was over, and if he were released, he would return to the United States, devote a period of time to serious Bible study, and then return to Japan to share the message of Christ with the Japanese people.  That is exactly what he did…Great crowds came to hear his story, and many responded to his invitation to receive Christ.

“Fuchida was deeply impressed.  Here it was again: a second example of love overcoming hatred.  He sensed the power of forgiveness to actually change the hearts and lives of people…Excitedly; he sensed that it could be a principle strong enough to be the basis for his projected book.  He determined to learn all he could about DeShazer and his beliefs.

“At the train station on his way home, he obtained a copy of the New Testament in Japanese.  A few months later, he began to read two or three chapters a day in the Scriptures…Then in September 1949, Fuchida read Luke 23.  This was the first time he had read the story of the crucifixion.

“The Calvary scene pierced Fuchida’s spirit. It all came alive in St. Luke’s starkly beautiful prose.  In the midst of the horror of His death, Christ said, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’  Tears sprang to Fuchida’s eyes; he had reached the end of his ‘long, long wondering.’  Surely these words were the source of the love that DeShazer and Peggy Covell had shown…As Jesus hung there, on the cross, He prayed not only for His persecutors but for all humanity.  That meant He had prayed and died for Fuchida, a Japanese man living in the twentieth century. (What Happened to the Man Who Led the Attack on Pearl Harbor?’ Command, Fall/Winter 1991, pp. 6-8.  Used by permission.)

            By the time Fuchida finished reading Luke, he had received the Lord Jesus Christ.  He did end up writing his book and entitled it From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha.  His life verse, which he signed under his every signature, was Luke 23”34: ‘Father, forgive them for they know what they do.’

            Forgiveness has a tremendous power to affect the world.  God knew it, Paul knew it, and Philemon needed to know it.  The Holy Spirit knew that all men and women needed to know it, and that’s why this wonderful little letter was included in Scripture.  May we take its message to heart.