Pearl Harbour

LOCH A TUATH NEWS February 2002

At a recent school Assembly, I told the story of Mitsuo Fuchida. His was not a familiar name to me when I first read it, but his fascinating story captured my interest, and is worth repeating.

Fuchida was, by 1941, the most experienced pilot in the Japanese Naval Air Force. Brought up in a family which had been taught that loyalty to the fatherland was the most important thing, he was ready to serve his Emperor to the death.

Four days after his 39th birthday, Fuchida flew his most important mission -- as leader of the 360 Japanese planes which bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. These events, of just over sixty years ago, brought the United States into the Second World War, and burned themselves deep into the American psyche. The recent release of the film 'Pearl Harbor' was an attempt -- in epic proportions -- to mix fact and fiction in portrayal of the day which President Roosevelt said would 'live in infamy'.

For Mitsuo Fuchida, Pearl Harbor represented his greatest triumph. It was the crowning moment of his career, of which he wrote later that his heart blazed with joy at the devastation he had caused the American fleet in the Pacific. America, of course, retaliated, and dealt a series of decisive blows on the Japanese until they surrendered.

For Fuchida, the aftermath of the war was one of disillusionment and of depression. One day, however, he stepped off a train in Tokyo, and was handed a tract. It was the story of Jake DeShazer, who had found Christ while reading a Bible in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Fuchida could not explain how DeShazer's life could be so transformed, to the point that he expressed forgiveness to the Japanese for the devastation they had caused.

Fuchida, however, wanted the same peace, and the same power in his life, that DeShazer had. He bought a Bible and read it. The story of the crucifixion, and Christ's prayer "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", led Fuchida to the Christ of the cross, and to the salvation that is only to be found in him. He became a faithful evangelist and friend of the Gospel, and wrote his story in a famous tract entitled "From Pearl Harbor to Calvary".

There are some things that the Hollywood films do not tell us. But the story of Mitsuo Fuchida is surely worth relating. There are some things more powerful than the world's greatest bombs. In the aftermath of September 11th, with the world still tottering along the brink of uncertainty, it is surely important to remember that the Gospel can transform the most unlikely of people, and can bring hope into the most disillusioned of lives.

Fuchida never forgot Pearl Harbor, and always regretted it. But he always said too that he was thankful that a second not-to-be-forgotten day came into his experience -- 14 April 1950, when, he says, "I became a new person". He died in 1976.

We cannot turn back the clock. But we can find Jesus Christ. And we may be born again, praise God!