He nodded. “Our life together, Joni … It could be a real ministry for the Lord.”
And so it had been.
Neither of them could or should forget the thousands, actually millions, of people in the United States and hundreds of forgotten, out-of-the way corners of the world who had been helped and encouraged in Jesus’ name. By their ministry. Together.
God helping them both, they would have that ministry again. United as one.
Wasn’t He the One who made all things new?
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAMURAI
Fear not because you sometimes walk in darkness
and have no light. Remember that you cannot understand
the mind of the Lord, nor the meaning of His dealings.
But when the clouds compass you about, believe in God
as Daniel did; trust in the Lord Jesus at all times;
sing to Him in the dungeon, as Paul and Silas;
sing to Him even in the fire, as the three
Hebrew children did; be sure, be very sure,
he who believes shall never be ashamed.
J. C. RYLE
In the first couple of decades following World War II, being Japanese in the United States, even if you were American born and raised, carried a stigma with it. As the only Asian boy in his elementary school, Ken Tada knew what it was to be called “Jap” by kids and even by some adults.
His parents had faced much stiffer trials than that.
Just weeks after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration issued Executive Order 9066, compelling everyone of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to leave homes and jobs and relocate to internment camps scattered across the country. For Ken’s father, Takeo, that meant the Gila River Camp in Arizona; for his mother, Kyoko, it meant Manzanar, a windy, dusty compound at the base of Mount Whitney in Central California.
It was a distressing, shameful epoch in America’s history. But instead of turning bitter against his adopted homeland, Takeo Tada vowed to “show them all” and become an American success story. And that’s exactly what he did. In a postwar America, the Tadas returned to Southern California and rebuilt their home and their fortunes through sacrifice and hard work. Takeo went into the import-export business, bringing in crystal from Japan. Eventually, he linked up with an American businessman and began traveling to Japan to negotiate on behalf of his friend’s electronics company, which meant he was often away from home when Ken was still a youngster.
Takeo Tada was a stern and exacting man, and he expected to see similar qualities of drive and determination in his American-born son, Ken. “Average” simply would not do; Takeo believed that a Japanese man had to work twice as hard as others to become a success in America. Once when Ken brought home a report card with Cs, his father sternly dressed him down to the point of tears. To the elder Mr. Tada, a C was as disgraceful as an F. Another time his dad walked in on Ken when he was coloring a map and announced, “You’re using too sharp of a pencil.” When Ken half-chuckled his disbelief, he got a resounding smack across the head.
In later years, Joni had once asked Ken, “Was there ever a time when you felt like your dad was proud of you?”
Ken had smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Well,” he said, “when I was about thirteen years old, just after junior high school, my dad and I were going fishing, and we stopped at a Denny’s restaurant in Bakersfield. When we were paying the bill, I stood there looking at a glass case filled with cigarettes and cigars. When my dad saw me admiring the cigars, he asked if I wanted one. I was stunned. Was he joking? Turns out he wasn’t. When I nodded my head yes, he bought me a cigar. For me, it was a kind of passage. And it felt really good.”
“How did you enjoy the cigar?”
“Well, not so much.”
“So …” she had replied, “he never really bestowed manhood on you, did he? You know … his approval?”
Ken smiled, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
The trouble was, Ken simply wasn’t wired like his dad, and he could never find that same overpowering, fire-in-the-belly initiative that had propelled his father through the years. That led to multiple unhappy confrontations in the home, when he found himself being compared unfavorably to his older Japanese-American cousins who were already making their marks in the business world.
“Why can’t you be like your cousin Randy? Why aren’t you getting better grades? Why aren’t you striving to get into a good college, like USC?”
Ken was genial and likable rather than driven and stern. At John Burroughs High School in Burbank, he was a favorite with his classmates, becoming student body president and playing linebacker for the JBHS Indians in the Foothill League. At football practice, Ken would occasionally glance up to see that his dad had stopped by on the way home from work. Takeo stood behind the chain-link fence that surrounded the practice field, hands in his pockets. He never waved or acknowledged Ken in any way. He just watched.
It gave Ken a small but significant glimmer of pride to see his dad standing there. But it was also a picture of their relationship in those days … distant … constrained … separated by a fence neither of them could seem to scale.
When Ken turned down the football scholarship to the University of Hawaii, his father was disappointed. Turn down a scholarship to a major university? But the really important thing was that Ken study hard and get ahead. Business would be best, of course. Or maybe medicine or dentistry. Saying no to a scholarship, however, only seemed to affirm what Takeo Tada had already concluded about his son: no drive, no vision, no willingness to sacrifice, no passion for success.
In short, a disappointment.
In the summer of 1967, young Joni Eareckson dove off a floating raft into the waters of Chesapeake Bay and broke her neck. In the grief and depression of subsequent days, she wanted to kill herself, even to the extent of tossing her head back and forth, trying to make the break worse and possibly, hopefully, end her own life. She felt strangled, as the psalmist described it in Psalm 116, by the cords of death. A living death.
In the very same summer, on the other side of the country, young Ken Tada had been invited to be a groomsman in a friend’s wedding. The mother of the groom had given everyone tranquilizers, “since we’re all so nervous,” as she put it. The pill relaxed him, but when he drank a glass of champagne after the wedding, his head went fuzzy, and he couldn’t seem to shake off the feeling.
That night, sitting in front of the TV at home, he still felt strange. Something wasn’t quite right. He turned on some music and picked up a book that had been laying around … Rosemary’s Baby, a novel about the occult.
Suddenly and unaccountably, he started thinking about his gun collection.
He pictured one of his handguns. A .45. He visualized himself picking it up, pulling the slide back, and loading a bullet into the chamber, then going out to the front yard, putting the cold end of the barrel to his temple, and pulling the trigger. The thought repelled him and drew him at the same time. Restless, he began pacing the room. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the gun. What would it be like? It would be so simple. So easy. No problem at all. Maybe I should …
That night, before he went to bed, he thought about taking the precaution of pulling the firing pin out of all his guns, or maybe dumping all his ammunition out in the yard. It would be the “safe” thing to do. Or — would it? It would mean getting his guns out. Looking at them. Handling them. Feeling the loose bullets in the palm of his hand.
He didn’t want anything to do with those guns. Not tonight! He finally turned in and fell asleep.
For the next two years, not a day went by that Ken Tada didn’t think about suicide. It was never an overwhelming compulsion; it was more like an extra shadow that followed him everywhere he went. The thoughts played in his head like the proverbial broken record. What’s the purpose of life? What’s the reason for going on? What could I hope to accomplish? Why not just end the c
harade? It would be so easy. Maybe his dad had been right. He was a disappointment. Maybe he lacked the drive to make something of himself. Maybe he wouldn’t be of any account in the world. Maybe he wouldn’t achieve anything. The empty years seemed to stretch out before him.
Ken knew nothing of spiritual warfare at that time. Years later, he and Joni would reflect on the fact that the same spirit of suicide and destruction had visited both of them at the same time, in the same year, in the same month, on opposite ends of the country — Ken in his home and Joni in a hospital.
No, Satan was not omniscient, but … it was as if the evil one had picked up some hint in the heavenlies, some whispered suggestion of how God might use the two of them, together. It was as if he wanted to destroy both of them before they ever met and married, before they could form a team that would snatch thousands of people out of darkness, despair, and degradation.
But God had His plan for Ken, too, a plan that involved life rather than death.
Although dealing daily with depression, he kept his heart tender, and in an era of so-called “free love,” he had stayed away from drugs and sleeping around. From his earliest memory, he had always had a sensitive conscience, an innate sense of moral obligation, and a deep desire to “do the right thing.”
Ken majored in history at Valley State College, now California State University at Northridge. It didn’t have the prestige of the University of Hawaii or USC, but it was close to home, and on familiar turf. It suited Ken just fine. He played football for a year, but didn’t see that leading anywhere, and so he left the team.
On weekends, he ended up playing flag football with a group of friends, including Pete Lubisich, a legendary football star at John Burroughs High School and later at USC. Everyone in Burbank knew about Pete, and Ken had been a little bit in awe when Pete had befriended him and drawn him into a group of guys who played in a league.
Two of these new friends included two brothers, Ed and Nobie Hill, leaders in an organization called Young Life. Ken had met Eddie when he was Ken’s linebacker coach back in high school. Nobie saw real quality in Ken Tada right from the start, recognizing him as a likable, sensitive, sweet-spirited young man. One weekend he invited Ken to be a supervisor of a group of teenagers at a Young Life weekend retreat at Valindale Farm, just south of the little Danish village of Solvang, California. It was a picturesque place with white barns nestled against the dramatic coastal hills separating the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley from the Pacific Ocean.
The weekend sounded fun, but it was rotten timing. Ken had a senior class midterm coming up the following week. Should he go?
He ended up saying yes, a decision that would change his life.
He had convinced himself he could take his books along and “study in the evenings.” Not a chance! He never touched the books once. The owner of Valindale Farm had often rented out his barns and bunkhouses to Young Life and local church youth groups. There were cows and pigs … and lots of mud. The centerpiece was a big barn with large wooden rafters, a straw-covered floor, and hay bales piled high. The place smelled great.
One evening Ken, Ed, and Nobie were in the barn, standing some distance from a large bunch of high school kids.
“OK, guys,” Nobie playfully challenged the teens. “See if you can take us down.”
The kids readily accepted the challenge, and in the following instant Ken found himself swarmed by a mob of pushing, shoving, fighting, laughing students intent on bringing him down. He put up a strong fight, but the next thing he knew he was at the bottom of a huge pile of high schoolers, laughing, yelling, and fighting for breath.
He loved it. And the teenagers felt instinctively drawn to his warm, approachable personality. The words teacher and coach began to gain prominence in his mind.
That night when the speaker, Randy Justa, explained to the young people what the weekend was all about, encouraging them to go off and consider the claims of Jesus Christ on their lives, Ken knew the message was for him. He opened his heart to God for the first time. It didn’t happen overnight, but the thoughts of suicide and moods of depression didn’t seem to have the same hold on him as before.
Ken felt like Someone Else was there too, fighting at his side.
So who would have thought he would end up teaching at John Burroughs High, just blocks away from where he grew up?
As far as Ken was concerned, it was the perfect job. When the opportunity unexpectedly opened up in 1970, he stepped right into it. He’d had some good years at JBHS, and now he was going back to work with kids, coach football, and … something else. Something exciting. Along with his friend Eddie Hill, he would be helping to lead the Young Life outreach at Burroughs, giving kids an opportunity to pursue fun, wholesome activities and to hear about a God who loved them.
The depressive moods and thoughts about suicide mostly faded into the background as Ken kept a busy schedule of teaching, coaching, going to Young Life events, and playing in some all-out, go-for-broke racquetball matches on Saturdays. It was a mostly comfortable world. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Not yet. But his dad had pushed so hard, trying to fix him up with Japanese women — flight attendants, daughters of Japanese executives, and on and on — that he had checked himself out of the dating scene for a while.
In the meantime, there was football, his social studies classes, parent meetings, pep assemblies, and the occasional disciplinary issues in one of his classes. Life was pretty good. A little lonely at times, perhaps, but on the whole, it was predictable, comfortable, and under control.
And then at church one Sunday he met Joni Eareckson … and nothing was what you would call “predictable,” “comfortable,” or “under control” from that time on.
When he first pursued a relationship with Joni, he hadn’t given a lot of thought to the idea that she was famous.
She was beautiful. She had an exciting life. She loved Jesus. She cared deeply about others. She seemed interested in him. And yes, she was in a wheelchair. What else did he need to know?
Looking back across twenty-plus years of marriage, however, he had to admit that Joni’s celebrity status was one of the forces that had shaped their life together. Because of who she was, Ken had found himself in a supporting role through much of his adult life. It was Joni who had been the up-front public figure, the author, the artist, and the TV and radio personality—the one who had spent time with Billy Graham and President Bush and leaders all over the world.
How could he forget that time in Romania, when Joni’s van had been surrounded by adoring fans on a street in Bucharest, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Bucharest? Even then it had amazed him. She truly had become an international celebrity.
It was what it was. She handled it all well, and that had been
OK.
Or mostly OK.
At first, to be honest, he’d felt a bit like window dressing when they were out together. People always recognized her or crowded around her wherever they went, wanting their picture with her, wanting to touch her, wanting her autograph … and generally ignoring him completely. Like on their honeymoon in Hawaii, when several people had assumed he was her “native Hawaiian guide” showing her around the island. A tour guide! Oh, well …
Not that she had encouraged any of that. No, quite the opposite. She had always been good about trying to introduce him, include him in the conversation, bring him forward. She was proud of him, and she bragged about him every chance she got — how he was revered by his students, how great he was at teaching history. She had even written a devotional once that made reference to his muscles! But he also knew who they really wanted to talk to. Of course they did. Who wouldn’t want to talk to Joni?
So as the years went by, he had learned the art of stepping back. At least when he was in her world. In his world — in the classroom or on the football field — he was relaxed and confident.
He’d stepped back to push her wheelchair, when needed. Stepped back to let her shine in the spotlight. Stepped
back to let her lead in conversations with senators, agents, book publishers, government officials, and health professionals. Stepped back to give her the prominence in speaking engagements, workshops, media interviews, whatever.
Had he been comfortable with that? Yes. Honestly, he had.
After all, it had always been Joni’s name that was important, not his. Not that he cared much about his name. Kenneth Takeshi Tada. Takeshi, Ken’s middle name, was the Japanese word for samurai. In Japan’s ancient past, a samurai was a highly trained warrior who served his daimyo, or master, with absolute loyalty, even to the death. In fact, the word samurai literally meant “those who serve.” They were an elite class of warriors, considered superior to common foot soldiers.
A warrior who served.
Growing up in America, Ken had been embarrassed by his middle name and tried to keep it a secret. His dad had wanted him to have more of a warrior personality — a hard-charging, aggressive drive to take on all comers and claw his way to the top.
Which was another good reason to hate his middle name.
But all this was about to change.
JUNE 2003
Early in the spring of 2003, Ken’s friend Jan Janura had given him the John Eldredge book Wild at Heart. Many of the guys at church had been talking about it, but he hadn’t been particularly motivated to read it. In those rare times when he found himself with recreational reading time, he loved to dive into a meaty historical narrative, particularly those that dealt with World War II. Because Jan had given him the book, however (and would no doubt ask him about it), he thought he should make at least a token effort to get into it. Almost surprising himself, he’d found it intriguing and read it from cover to cover. Eldredge was a rugged character — an outdoorsman and adventurer who really knew how to write.
The book had good stuff about spiritual warfare too. It was a reminder that a man’s fight with the evil one never stopped, no matter what else might be going on in life. Staying prepared for combat was at least half the battle. And war was never comfortable or easy.
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