Mitsuo Fuchida writes:
I must admit I was more excited than usual as I awoke that morning at 3:00 a.m., Hawaii time, four days past my thirty-ninth birthday. Our six aircraft carriers were positioned 230 miles north of Oahu Island. 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 ‘97-type’ plane used for level bombing and torpedo flying.
The sunrise in the east was magnificent above the white clouds as I led 360 planes towards Hawaii at an altitude of 3,000 meters. I knew my objective: to surprise and cripple the American naval force in the Pacific. But I fretted about being thwarted should some of the U.S. battleships not be there. I gave no thought of the possibility of this attack breaking open a mortal confrontation with the United States. I was only concerned about making a military success.
As we neared the Hawaiian Islands that bright Sunday morning, I made a preliminary check of the harbor, nearby Hickam Field and the other installations surrounding Honolulu. Viewing the entire American Pacific Fleet peacefully at anchor in the inlet below, I smiled as I reached for the mike and ordered, ‘All squadrons, plunge in to attack!’ The time was 7:49 a.m.
In a military camp in California, a young soldier on KP duty heard the news of Pearl Harbor via radio and angrily hurled a potato at the wall yelling, “Jap, just wait and see what we’ll do to you!” His name was Jacob DeShazer.
Only a month later, he volunteered for a secret mission with Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s squadron. The mission was a surprise raid on Tokyo. Jacob’s plane was called “Bat Out of Hell”. The plan was for the bombers to fly off a carrier 800 miles from the Japanese coast, bomb Tokyo, and then land in friendly Chinese territory. After Jacob (who was the bombardier) released his bombs over Japan, his B-25 headed for China. Bad weather, low fuel, and no radio signal to guide him to his base made so the Jacob’s entire crew had to eject over some unknown spot on the Chinese mainland. They were captured by Japanese troops and held as war criminals.
The Japanese treated them incredibly cruelly, torturing them, starving them, and finally shooting his three crew mates. Only the impassioned prayers of Jacob’s mother kept him alive.
In the middle of the night in the U.S., God had awoken Jacob’s mother with a burden and she was pleading with God for her son’s salvation. It was day in Japan as Jacob was sitting in his cell seething with hatred toward his Japanese guards.
Jacob writes:
My thoughts turned toward what I heard about Christianity changing hatred between human beings into real brotherly love and I was gripped with a strange longing to examine the Christian’s Bible to see if I could find the secret.
I begged my captors to get a Bible for me. At last, in the month of May, 1944, a guard brought me the book, but told me I could have it only for three weeks.
I eagerly began to read its pages. Chapter after chapter gripped my heart. In due time I came to the books of the prophets and found that their every writing seemed focused on a divine Redeemer from sin, One who was to be sent from heaven to be born in the form of a human babe. Their writings so fascinated me that I read them again and again until I had earnestly studied them through six times. Then I went on into the New Testament and there read of the birth of Jesus Christ, the One who actually fulfilled the very prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and the other Old Testament writers.
On June 8, 1944 the words in Romans 10:9 stood out boldly before my eyes: ‘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.’
That very moment, God gave me grace to confess my sins to Him and He forgave me all my sins and saved me for Jesus’ sake.
How my heart rejoiced in my newness of spiritual life, even though my body was suffering so terribly from the physical beatings and lack of food! But suddenly I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes and that when I looked at the enemy officers and guards who had starved and beaten my companions and me so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity.
I realized that these people did not know anything about my Savior and that if Christ is not in a heart, it is natural to be cruel. I read in my Bible that while those who crucified Jesus had beaten Him and spit upon Him before He was nailed to the cross, on the cross He tenderly prayed in His moment of excruciating suffering, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
And now, from the depths of my heart, I too prayed for God to forgive my torturers, and I determined by the aid of Christ to do my best to acquaint these people with the message of salvation that they might become as other believing Christians.
With His love controlling my heart, the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians took on a living meaning: ‘Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in truth; beareth all things, believeth all things. Love never faileth.’
Christianity Today writes:
One day after the exercise period, DeShazer’s guard hurried him toward his cell, shoved him inside, slamming the door on DeShazer’s foot. Instead of opening the door, the guard kicked the prisoner’s foot with his hobnailed boots.
DeShazer desperately pushed the door until he could free his foot. His mind blazed with rage.
However, Jesus’ words came to him: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them, which despitefully use you.’
Nursing his foot, DeShazer wished for a while that his mind would go blank; instead, all the Scripture God had helped him memorize flooded into his mind. Calming down, he decided, God commanded me to love. What a wonderful world it would be if we would all try to love one another. I’ll try.
The next morning was the test. DeShazer greeted the guard respectfully in Japanese.
The guard gave him a puzzled look and said nothing.
Every morning, the prisoner offered friendly greetings and received no response. Then one morning the guard walked straight to DeShazer’s cell, and spoke to him through the door. He was smiling. DeShazer asked about his family. From that time on, the guard treated him with respect and kindness, once even brought him a boiled sweet potato. Another time, the guard slipped DeShazer figs and candy. [...]
Like the prophet Daniel, he knelt and prayed diligently.
On August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, DeShazer woke up about 7 A.M. and was impressed to pray for peace. At 2 P.M., the Holy Spirit told the prisoner, “You don’t need to pray any more. The victory is won.” DeShazer thought this was a better way to receive world news than waiting for a radio report. Immediately, his thoughts turned to his captors. Wondering what would happen to the Japanese people, God gave him the answer: he was to eventually return to Japan and teach them about his Savior.
Mitsuo Fuchida writes:
I was in Hiroshima the day before the atom bomb was dropped, attending a week long military conference with the Army. Fortunately, I received a long distance call from my Navy Headquarters, asking me to return to Tokyo.
With the end of the war, my military career was over, since all Japanese forces were disbanded. I returned to my home village near Osaka and began farming, but it was a discouraging life. I became more and more unhappy, especially when the war crime trials opened in Tokyo. Though I was never accused, Gen. 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. When I passed him, he handed me a pamphlet entitled I Was a Prisoner of Japan [by Jacob DeShazer]. Involved right then with the trials on atrocities committed against war prisoners, I took it.
What I read was the fascinating episode which eventually changed my life… His story, printed in pamphlet form, was something I could not explain.
Neither could I forget it. 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 traditionally 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 which 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.
That date, April 14, 1950 — became the second “day to remember” of my life. On that day, I became a new person. My complete view on life was changed by the intervention of the Christ I had always hated and ignored before.
As an evangelist, I have traveled across Japan and the Orient introducing others to the One Who changed my life. 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 Jesus Christ. Youth must realize that He is the only hope for this troubled world.
Though my country has the highest literacy rate in the world, education has not brought salvation. Peace and freedom — both national and personal — come only through an encounter with Jesus Christ.
I would give anything to retract my actions of twenty-nine years ago at Pearl Harbor, but it is impossible. Instead, I now work at striking the death-blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies. And that hatred cannot be uprooted without assistance from Jesus Christ.
DeShazer and Fuchida—a bombardier of Doolittle’s squadron and the flight leader for the attack on Pearl Harbor—met and became good friends, traveling around Japan preaching together.
Christianity Today concludes:
In 1959 a dream came true for DeShazer when he moved to Nagoya to establish a Christian church in the city he had bombed. Because of one shared Bible, the man who first came to Japan in ‘Bat Out of Hell’ returned on the wings of a dove to spread the ‘peace that passeth understanding’ in that country for the next thirty years.
