The Life-Changing Power of Forgiveness
Now before we get to the specifics of closing the demon door of unforgiveness allow me to illustrate with your required dose of WWII history just how powerful the act of forgiveness can be. Take a moment and return with me to Pearl Harbor…
A rainbow appeared in the bright Hawaiian skies as we prepared to visit the Arizona Memorial. The Navy skipper piloting our launch across the famous waters of Pearl Harbor instructed us to silence our cell phones, reminding us that the site was both a gravesite and a memorial to the many men who died on December 7, 1941, the Day that lives in infamy. The crowd grew quiet and respectful as we walked the simple, white structure spanning the sunken, rusting hulk of the battleship Arizona. I scanned the plaque listing the names of all the sailors and Marines that had died in the attack, proud to see the Davis surname listed frequently, exceeded only by the prolific Smith clan. As I stared down at the water, the black tears of the battleship’s crude oil to this day leaking up to the surface to form fast-fading iridescent patterns, I couldn’t help but think of the man who had personally led the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. Only God could have arranged the extraordinary patterns of this man’s life, a life utterly transformed by the power of forgiveness.
Very few people in the history of the world can claim to have launched a world war, but Commander Mitsuo Fuchida is one of them. As the flight leader of the aircraft carrier planes launched against Pearl Harbor, his radio signal Tora! Tora! Tora! (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!), signifying success in surprising the US Navy fleet, has become infamous. Fuchida’s signal was received back in Japan at Imperial Headquarters and then simultaneously relayed to the Japanese Armed Forces in Taiwan, French Indochina, Malaya, Borneo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guam, and Wake Island, signaling the start of combat operations, and the second act, as it were, of WWII in the Pacific.
During the war, Fuchida was proud to participate in the Pearl Harbor attack; he considered it a daring and ingenious attack against the aggressive United States, a surprise attack well within the Bushido code of gaining the upper hand in combat. Throughout the war he participated in many of the major Pacific battles, including Midway, and even directed aerial operations. He was in Hiroshima literally the day before the atomic bomb fell and toured the radioactive ruins the day after (Everyone who toured the city with Fuchida eventually died of radiation poisoning, save one.) You can read the story of this man’s amazing life in the book God’s Samurai by Gordon Prange, or Fuchida’s own memoir, For That One Day. Proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction, Fuchida became a Christian evangelist after the war, sharing the stage with Billy Graham, and spending time with former enemies like Nimitz, Doolittle, Truman, and Eisenhower during his many visits to America.
To fully appreciate Fuchida’s shocking transformation from Japanese war hero to a gospel-preaching Christian, you must first understand that forgiveness is a foreign concept to the Japanese. The moral thing is to seek revenge; only a lunatic or an extremely weak-willed person would fail to seek punishment against an offender. Prange cites the tale of a Japanese man captured and awaiting death, who would pray to be reincarnated again 7 times so he could seek revenge against his oppressors in each life (with the expectation that his offspring would continue seeking revenge until the debt was paid). The Japanese word for revenge, katakiuchi, literally means, “attack enemy.” Fuchida tells the heart-rending story of witnessing in Hiroshima a Japanese boy and his younger sister, both horribly burned by atomic radiation. The boy was bringing bowls of water to give to his desperately thirsty sister, who, with her body burned and swollen, could barely drink the water. With her dying breath the sister thanked her brother and then whispered, “Brother, get revenge.”
How does a man raised in such a culture, trained in the hawkish traditions of the Japanese Imperial Navy, a warrior famous for leading one of the most infamous attacks in modern history—how does such a man become a Christian?
Forgiveness seems to defy both devilish and human logic; it goes against the grain, against, as it were, the very laws of nature, as if Newton’s apple suddenly flew upward into the air. It isn’t just the Japanese who struggle with the crazy notion of letting go one’s right to judgment and revenge—we all struggle with it. It’s human nature; our basic, gut reaction is to want to hurt those who hurt us. An eye for an eye makes perfect sense when someone has caused you pain. Letting a person yank out your eye—and leaving it at that—well, that’s asking way too much. Like the doctrine of hell, the very idea of forgiveness is yet another proof of God’s existence, because it’s quite obvious no human being would ever invent such an outlandish concept.
Think I exaggerate? Meet Margaret (Peggy) Covell. Her story changed Fuchida’s life. Fuchida survived the war, poor, depressed, and embittered by the war trials convened to punish those who had led Japan’s war effort. In searching for proof of America’s hypocrisy, Fuchida interviewed returning Japanese POWs who had been interned in the US. From a few prisoners he heard the astounding story of a young lady who had volunteered her time at the internment camp, seeing to the prisoner’s needs day after day. When they asked Peggy why she was helping them, she explained that her parents had been Baptist missionaries to Japan who had fled to the Philippines
when the war started. The Japanese then took the Philippines, forcing her parents into hiding; they managed to elude the Japanese army until the end of the war, when they were caught. Sadly, the possession of a small radio raised suspicions and doomed Peggy’s parents. They were beheaded by Japanese soldiers on the spot. Peggy explained that serving the Japanese POWs was her way of obeying God’s command to love one’s enemies and transforming her hatred for her parent’s killers into love.
This story astounded Fuchida. He became obsessed with tracking down more details about the death of Peggy’s parents. Through Filipino sources he heard the story of how Mr. and Mrs. Covell, blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs, were forced to kneel as their captors stood behind them with swords drawn. The Covells remained united, praying together until the very end. “What did Mr. and Mrs. Covell pray as they were about to be beheaded?” asked Fuchida, “That was my long wondering.” See God’s Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor by Gordon W. Prange, pp. 203, 209.
God answered Fuchida’s unexpressed prayer by bringing him into contact with Jacob DeShazer, a member of the well-known Doolittle raid (more of his story in a later chapter). Taken captive by the Japanese after the attack on Japan, DeShazer was brutalized for years by his captors. It was in prison, however, that DeShazer returned to his Christian roots and, in reading the Bible, realized that he had to forgive the Japanese he had so intensely hated. Upon his conversion he vowed to return to Japan as a missionary, a vow that he fulfilled, preaching the Gospel across Japan, though with little effect at first.
Once again confronted with the mystifying concept of forgiveness, in a coincidence only God could arrange, the man who led the raid on Pearl Harbor was introduced to the Bible by an airman who flew on America’s first bombing raid against Japan. Fuchida discovered the Scripture story in which Jesus forgave those who crucified Him, and suddenly, in a flash of inspiration, he understood that Mr. and Mrs. Covell must have prayed the same prayer. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Here indeed was a weapon Fuchida could not defend against. Such a love rocked him to his core and, like a homing beacon, drew him irrevocably to cast himself before the cross of Christ. Given his training as a warrior, Fuchida recognized that only divinely inspired love and forgiveness could end the inevitable cycle of kill and be killed in a world torn by the ugliness of war and atomic bombs.
Note: DeShazer explained to Fuchida later, after Fuchida’s conversion, that having grown discouraged in his work, and realizing that it would take a miracle to break through to the Japanese, he had fasted 40 days on water only. Fuchida was the obvious, immediate answer to his prayers, a famous war hero and someone the Japanese had to take seriously. Fuchida’s conversion eventually led to the conversion of thousands of Japanese.
Your Brother in the Battle,
Timothy
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Excerpt taken from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 3: Spiritual Warfare
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