Soon after, he was taken to their barracks, and their interrogations began. One of the Japanese who spoke English fairly well asked where he had come from. However, DeShazer kept silent and refused to give any answers. When he was asked, “Anything you want to eat?” he opened his mouth for the first time and responded,“Nothing bad, OK?” He was given hotcakes and green tea. For DeShazer, it was his first experience of eastern food, and thanks to the green tea and hotcakes, he regained his strength.
Before long, he was moved to a big city. He learned that his four crewmates were imprisoned there. The city was called Nanchang, in the middle of territory occupied by Japanese forces.
The following morning, the five of them were put together to have their photograph taken. Then, they were handcuffed, bound with rope at the waist and put on a transport plane. They were locked up that evening. They did not know where they were because they had been blindfolded for more than 12 hours. Later, they would learn that they were in Shanghai.
DeShazer was taken into a room, and his blindfold was removed. There were several Japanese present. One of them showed DeShazer a slip of paper with “HORNET” written on it and asked him how it was pronounced. When he responded, “Hornet,” the new questions came in rapid succession.
“OK, that was the carrier you took off from for your bombing raid on Japan, wasn’t it?”
DeShazer turned his face, saying, “I don’t want to answer.”
He asked again, “Doolittle was your commander, wasn’t he?”
DeShazer turned his face again, saying, “I don’t want to answer.” The interrogator slapped his face several times.
The next morning, as the sun rose, DeShazer was pulled out from his cell, blindfolded, handcuffed and, once again, bound at the waist with a rope. He was put on a transport plane. He could hear his crewmates’ voices, but they were forbidden to talk. The flight took several hours. As the bandage was loosened a bit, DeShazer looked through a small opening, and he saw Mt. Fuji. Before long, the plane landed, and he thought they had landed somewhere in Tokyo. After a while, they were put in a car and taken to their next prison. They were at the Tokyo barracks of the Imperial Army’s military police.
There, DeShazer was interrogated again about the name of the carrier that launched his plane, the name of the air squadron’s commander and other related subjects, but again he persisted with the same response, “I don’t want to answer.” However, under terrible torture, he was eventually forced to answer their questions.
Japanese interrogators also tried to extract information that would help them identify where the Chinese kept large stores of gasoline. However, DeShazer did not know anything about this. He was only a low-ranking soldier and, as a corporal, in no position to know this kind of information. Whatever torture they applied, he could not tell them what they wanted to know because he had no knowledge.
Around that time, he learned that, besides the five of them, three crew members from another plane had been captured as well. They were kept in a separate cell, but, once in a while, their voices could be heard when they were talking to the prison guards. After roughly 60 days of interrogation in Tokyo, all eight prisoners were put on a train and transferred to Nagasaki. It was a long and tiring 24-hour trip. The walls of their new prison house were cement and were covered with tatami mats. It was an unsanitary room, but the eight prisoners were put in the same room, and they were able to talk to each other, without being disturbed by the guards, for the first time since they had been captured.
The next morning, they were put on a ship and arrived in Shanghai on June 19th. The next 70 days would be a succession of unending horror for them.
What awaited them in Shanghai was a military disciplinary hearing. After a trial at the hearing, all eight prisoners were sentenced to death. However, by a curious turn of events, five of the prisoners, including DeShazer, had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment. But the remaining three prisoners, Aviation Lieutenant Farrow, Aviation Lieutenant Dean E. Hallmark and Gunnery Sergeant Harold A. Spatz, were executed. DeShazer was consumed with anger as he wondered what the accusations against his three comrades were that resulted in their executions.
While DeShazer survived because of the reduction of his sentence to life imprisonment, he abhorred and hated any Jap. Besides, their treatment at the prisoner camps was nothing but cruelty. For no reason at all, the guards would hit and kick them. The meals were insufficient, leaving them in a condition of near-starvation. DeShazer’s mind was filled with hatred for the guards at the prisoner camp, a resentment that had no boundaries. After 14 months, one of the crew members, Lieutenant Robert J. Meder, died of malnutrition. At that time, DeShazer was almost driven to insanity because of his unquenchable hatred for the Japanese.
He cursed them: “Every Japanese should be wiped off the face of the earth, all of them.” However, around the time when he thought he could no longer control his hatred, he began to think about the roots of such intense human hatred. He started to think about what made Japanese dislike Americans, and what made him dislike Japanese. As he pondered this issue, he remembered that, when he was a child, he was told that it was Jesus Christ who turns such hatred among people into true brotherly love. He felt a strange, heart-felt desire to read the Bible, to search for any secrets that might be in that book.
DeShazer asked the guards to bring a Bible into the camp. However, there were no Bibles available then for prisoners of war. No matter how often he asked, DeShazer did not receive a copy of the Bible. Still, DeShazer was obsessed like a madman with the Bible, and every day as he saw the guards, he asked for the Bible. Then, in late May, 1944, one of the guards sent in an English-language Bible. It was the King James Version of the Old and New Testaments. But it came with a condition: he was allowed to keep it for only three weeks.
After DeShazer obtained the Bible, he was totally and happily absorbed in reading it. Every single page appealed to him. And he realized that everything written in the book was about the sacred person, sent from heaven in the shape of a man, who atoned for the sins of others.
The words in the Bible captivated DeShazer. He was very happy to know that God promised to give eternal life to those who believe in the son of God, Jesus Christ. He wished that he would be saved and that his sins would be forgiven. Then, he read the words given by the son of God, Jesus Christ: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)
It was on June 8th. DeShazer read the words in Romans 10:9, and at that moment he was convinced that God had given him the mercy to confess his sins. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
DeShazer felt that he had been saved. And he read further: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Now, DeShazer, who accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, had become a new creation. While he continued to be physically beaten and he suffered from extreme malnutrition, he discovered that God gave him spiritual eyes. When he looked at his Japanese guards with his new eyes—the guards who were beating him and his comrades, slowly starving them to death—DeShazer realized that his hatred for them had already changed to affection. It was natural that these Japanese should be cruel because they knew nothing about the Savior or Jesus Christ. DeShazer could now say, “Until yesterday, I hated and feuded with them as Jesus Christ was not with me, but I will be different from today. I have met Jesus Christ, and he gave me new eyes to see them as my brothers.”
The guards at the camp noticed this change in DeShazer. For them, Corporal DeShazer was good for nothing. And they knew when it was that he started to change. It was since they gave the Bible to him. They were impressed by whatever it was in the book that transformed DeShazer, and nobody dared to take it away from him, even after the three weeks had passed.
Thus, DeShazer was abl
e to continue his study of the Bible. God’s words are given in the Bible. Therefore, if you read devoutly with a prayer such as, “My God, please speak as I listen,” everything will be revealed as the wisdom of God. And as you continue to read the Bible in this manner, your belief will become deeper and stronger.
By reading the Bible, DeShazer made great progress in his faith, and he promised God, “My God, if you allow me to live on after this war is ended, please send me again to Japan. Many Japanese are not aware of the Savior, Jesus Christ. I would like to preach to them about the grace of Jesus Christ.”
Before long, the war ended. On August 20, 1945, US airborne troops parachuted onto the premises of the camp in Beijing and rescued DeShazer and the other prisoners. They were flown to the US mainland and hospitalized to recover their physical strength. Soon after, DeShazer retired from the Army and entered Seattle Pacific College, where he met and married Florence Matheny. He graduated with qualifications as a missionary, and on December 14, 1948, he left San Francisco on board the US merchant ship, the General M.C.Meigs, sailing to Japan. He was accompanied by his wife and their first child, Paul. Years before, he had departed San Francisco for the purpose of bombing Japan; he was returning to the same country, but this time he was carrying a Bible. He had only one objective, and that was to preach to them and let them know Jesus Christ.
That was the story contained in the booklet, I Was a Japanese Prisoner of War, and a final note said that DeShazer was engaged in missionary work in the suburbs of Osaka at the time of the booklet’s writing.
49
Oh, the Bible!
After reading DeShazer’s story, I myself was tempted to read the Bible. However, Tokyo was still going through major reconstruction, and there were no bookstores around. Even if one existed, most likely they would not have a copy of the Bible.
Then, I got an idea, and I thought it was a superb idea. I would go to Shibuya again and ask the missionary who gave me DeShazer’s booklet where I could get a Bible.
I went to the square outside the station in high spirits. However, that day seemed to be a day off for the missionary, and I was rather discouraged. But then, God helped me. Instead of the missionary, a young Japanese man was standing at the same place, calling attention to passersby. “Please listen, everybody. People cannot live by bread alone. Please buy the Bible that provides us with spiritual nourishment.”
He was a “Cole Porter” (a Bible salesman) of the Japan Bible Society, and he had stacked up a set of Bibles on top of orange crates.
I had gone back to Shibuya to ask the missionary for a Bible, and God placed a Bible salesman on the same spot where I met the missionary. It was indeed the provenance of God. I bought a revised translated version of the New Testament that was written in the literary style. It cost me 120 yen.
I brought it back, but I did not read it so energetically. I was in Tokyo because I had been summoned by GHQ, and I was busy all day and night preparing reports for the Occupation Forces.
One morning during my stay in Tokyo, the maid at my lodging entered to add charcoal to the bedside hibachi [a charcoal brazier]. Because of rationing during this period just after the war, she put in only a few small pieces of burning charcoal, covered them with ashes, and left. She also left the morning paper, so I reached from the bed to pick it up. It was the Asahi Shimbun, and it had a limited number of pages, again because of rationing. As usual, I started to read a regular column, “Vox Dei Vox Populi” [“Voice of Heaven, Voice of the People”].
To my surprise, the column that day dealt with a comment on the Bible. It read, “They say that the Bible is the best selling book in the world and that it has been translated into every language spoken by human beings. If the penalty of exile to an island still existed, and you were allowed to bring only one book, people of the world would choose the Bible. My fellow Japanese, if any of you has never read the Bible, open your mind and read only the first 30 pages. You will certainly find something that will move your heart.”
This was indeed the Voice of Heaven, Voice of the People for me. I bought the Bible that I wanted to read so badly, but I neglected to read it with the excuse that I was too busy with work. I was being scolded by God. I got out of bed, awe-inspired, and started to read the Bible from that day.
As I continued my reading, I became more and more interested. Every day, I read almost five chapters. However, I also found parts that were not clear. I was not going to church, so I could not ask any missionaries. With a hope that I would understand those unclear sections over time, I skipped over them and went on reading, praying that a revelation of Christ would appear.
After a month or so, one day I came to Luke 23, the scene where Jesus was executed on the cross. I was not a Christian, but at least I knew that Christ was crucified. I opened my eyes and read most attentively, “The other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left.” (Luke 23:33, 34).
I learned that Jesus was crucified, but I did not know that the Romans had put up three crosses. Trying to imagine the scene on the Hill of the Skull, I moved on to the next passage, “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” (Luke 23:34)
Then, all of a sudden, I nodded. I understood. What was it? I understood the meaning of the last prayer of the missionary couple, Margaret Covell’s parents. I was convinced that, if placed in Jesus’ situation, those who follow Him would say the same prayer that he said from the cross. Margaret’s parents must have prayed, “My Father in heaven, now Japanese soldiers are raising their swords and will kill me and my wife, but please forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
And this prayer struck Margaret’s heart. I was deeply moved and felt tears coming down my cheek.
I tried to think how her parents’ execution would have been regarded in Japan. It would be like a kabuki play: “Our spirits will stay in this world until we are fully avenged.” Then, the murdered couple’s children would seek vengeance by killing their parents’ killers, and once this was accomplished, they would be admired as dutiful children. What a difference!
Still, I did not think that Jesus’ final prayer had anything to do with me. I simply thought that it was a prayer of forgiveness addressed to the Jews or Roman soldiers who were facing him when he was on the cross. I felt that his prayer was saying, “My Father in heaven, now they are trying to crucify and kill me, but please forgive them. They know not what they do.”
It was then, suddenly, that a flash of revelation came to me. I was awe-struck. The revelation was that, “When Jesus said to forgive ‘them,’ you are included as one of them.” Then, the next prayer, “They know not what they do,” pierced my heart. Now I saw that I had spent 47 long years without knowing what I was doing, and I was quite disgusted with my own stupidity.
In past years, I was a soldier, and I believed that the most important duty I had was my behavior on the battlefield. War is not a crime. If you kill a person voluntarily, that is murder, and you cannot escape capital punishment. However, on the battlefield during war, the more you kill, the more decorations you will receive. Because killing contributes to widening the path to victory in battle, human beings have done this repeatedly since ancient times. I myself was promised the Order of the Golden Kite 2nd Class for killing as many as 3,000 people at Pearl Harbor.
However, I felt an ache in my heart as I thought about the grieving families of those who died. As a member of the military, I was convinced that war itself was one of the ways to attain peace in the name of justice, so I continued to fight, risking my life as a soldier. I believed that it was just because it reflected the loyalty of a soldier to his mother country, but now I know that justice is not something that can be defined by human beings at their discretion. It can be measured only on the scales of Jesus Christ.
I did not know anything about God. Existence withou
t knowing God is immoral, and it is considered to be sinful. Biblically, it is called “original sin.” In English, they put the definite article in front of the word— the sin. They do not refer to this or that sin but refer instead to that particular, original sin. Every other sin is derived from original sin, and, collectively, all other sins are referred to simply as various sins.
I admit that I have been a sinner, turning my back on God for 47 years. People usually do not like to be called a sinner. In particular, people who behave according to high moral standards dislike this expression even more. However, without consciousness of sin, faith in the God of Jesus Christ cannot and will not be born. The reason why Jesus Christ prayed for intercession while he was on the cross and shedding blood, “Father, forgive them,” was to atone for our sins. This is the Redemption and the forgiveness of the cross.
I became conscious of my sin, having spent 47 years without knowing what I was doing. Then, suddenly, I knew clearly that Jesus Christ died for my sin. It was not something that I learned from others, but I was convinced by the direct revelation from Jesus, and I turned towards God.
I immediately wrote in the space of DeShazer’s memoirs of conversion: “Now, I receive the only son of God, Jesus Christ, as my Savior. Date of this contract, February 26, 1950.”
This day was my second birthday. When I attained this second birthday, I was already 47 years old. It would have been better to receive my second birthday earlier, but it is never too late. We all have two birthdays: the first born out of flesh, and the second out of spirit.
50
Baptism
Inconveniently, there was no church near my house. While I was pondering what to do, it struck me that I should see the missionary, Toshio Saito, of the Sakai Oshoji Church. Quite some time ago, a peace prayer convention was held at this church.
For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor Page 26