"... reaching forth unto those things which are before ...
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus "
(Philippians 3:13-14)
EDITOR: Mr. Harry Foster
THE other day I read of the death in western Japan of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese Navy airman who directed the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in which over 2,000 American service men were killed. It was Fuchida who flashed the code message: 'Tora, Tora, Tora', which signified the complete success of the attack and the sinking of at least three American battleships.
Right to the end of the war -- and beyond it -- Fuchida was an aggressive godless man, but then, in God's infinite mercy, he was led to Christ. For many years he travelled all over the world, testifying to saving grace and forgiveness through the cross of Christ.
Some years ago I met Captain Fuchida in Scandinavia, and it was then that I heard the whole story from his own lips. It was a marvellous and most moving account which filled my heart with praise to Christ. It is quite impossible for me to repeat it here and, in any case, I imagine that it must be available in printed form. What I must mention, though, was the pivotal point upon which his conversion turned.
In the U.S.A. there was -- and perhaps still is -- a Christian woman whose parents were wickedly executed by the Japanese army. They were an elderly couple who had long served the Lord in the Philippines and who had remained there when the Japanese overran the country. They were seized, falsely accused of being spies, and summarily executed. When the news reached N. America, their daughter decided to devote herself to caring for the few Japanese prisoners-of-war in her own country, and she did this until they were repatriated at the end of hostilities.
It was through this that Mitsuo Fuchida heard about her. Full of bitter arrogance, the former Japanese commander began to prepare for revenge on all Americans by trying to collect evidence of the way in which the Americans had treated their prisoners-of-war. For this purpose he made it his business personally to interview each of the returned prisoners and -- to his surprise -- there were no accounts of atrocities but many tributes to the helpfulness of this devoted Christian woman. What surprised and mystified him most was the explanation which she gave to these Japanese prisoners of her reasons for her labours of love among them. It was the Japanese, so she told the men, who had cruelly killed her parents, but she knew what their last prayer had been before they were executed and, because of that prayer, she knew that she must devote herself to loving and caring for needy Japanese with whom she could make contact.
The whole idea of such kindness was foreign to Fuchida's way of thinking. He brushed this aside, but what continued to perplex him was the American woman's confident affirmation that she knew the substance of her parents' last prayer. How could she know this? The question baffled him and yet he could not dismiss it from his mind. It nagged at him and seemed to have no solution until he found from a tract which someone gave him that it was possible to obtain a copy of the Christian book called The New Testament.
He availed himself of this opportunity and began to read from Matthew 1 onwards. He was growingly affected by what he read but completely absorbed by his quest for the mysterious prayer. He completed the Gospels of Matthew and Mark without having found the answer to his problem. So he read on into Luke's Gospel, increasingly softened in his heart as he did so, but always asking himself the question: How did the American woman know what her parents had prayed? Then he reached chapter 23:34 and, in a flash of heavenly revelation, he saw it all. Jesus had prayed: "Father, forgive them" even as He was being crucified. So that was how Christians prayed for their enemies! That was what Christ had prayed for him: 'Father, forgive Mitsuo Fuchida'. He no longer thought of the American woman or the Japanese prisoners-of-war, but of himself, a fierce enemy of Christ, whom God was prepared to forgive in answer to the prayer of the crucified Saviour. At that very moment he sought and found forgiveness and eternal life by faith in Christ.
This, then, was the story behind the marvellous conversion to Christ of this simple Japanese brother, made all the more moving to me because of the halting English in which he related it. As he concluded the long and absorbing narrative, he added: 'I have no gift as a preacher, so I cannot give messages about the Saviour, but I can tell how He has given me peace and forgiveness through His cross, so that others may come [81/82] to know him too.' Captain Fuchida's voice is no longer heard on earth, but we praise God that his faithful testimony continued firmly to the end.
His was a wonderful story, but the secret of it lay in the fact that those American Christians obeyed Christ's command to love their enemies. Paul the apostle also had a wonderful testimony, which could be traced back to the Christlike prayer of Stephen as he too was being unjustly and cruelly murdered. Saul of Tarsus had heard those words with his own ears: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:60), and they became as goads to his conscience till he, too, found peace and forgiveness through the blood of the cross. In Fuchida's words: 'So that is what Christians pray for their enemies'! Do they? Do we?
In this issue we conclude the series of messages on the Sermon on the Mount given by Alec Motyer. The standard is high. It is too high for any man or woman apart from grace. But we have been given abundance of grace in Christ and so are expected to obey His commandment: "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:45). 'Pray for them, not against them. Set yourself to bring them the greatest benefit which it is within your power to bestow. ' (J. A. Motyer. See page 86.)
None of us has to face an execution squad, and very few of us have loved ones cruelly done to death as the American woman had. But daily we are involved in experiences which can become occasions for nursing grievances or bearing grudges. To our shame this is what we are prone to do. I fear that this may be one of the reasons why we so rarely see the conversions of a Saul of Tarsus or a Fuchida of Japan. The probability is that we shall never love those who offend us if we do not first pray for them. In this case the parents prayed, the daughter put the prayer into practice, and the Holy Spirit used the testimony to change a man who had for long been an enemy of God and a killer of his fellow men into a lover of Christ and a messenger of forgiveness and peace. We are all on trial. Do we merely call Christ, Lord, or do we do the things which He says?
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