When Enemies Become Friends

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know where, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day. Hello again, this is Dick Foth with stories to make sense of it all. That voice, what a unique instrument, if you will. That voice and that song belonged to a young British woman who 80 years ago in the middle of World War II became a symbol for hope and light and a better day. Her name is Verilin. Why don't we hear just a little bit more of that lovely voice of Verilin as she sings Will Me Again. Born to a working class family east end of London, she was found to have musical gifts, this voice of hers, in her early years growing up as a child. And later on as she grew into womanhood began singing with some bands in the 1930s and then came 1939 and Hitler's invasion of Poland and from most the world, the start of World War II. Her presence and her voice during those years came to symbolize the fighting spirit of the British people. Later she would be honored by the crown, was always for decades a favorite of the British people and uniquely a favorite of Queen Elizabeth for more than 70 years. You say, what are you talking about this kind of thing, World War II and a singer in the middle of the Christmas season in 2021? Well, it's because of this day, this is December 7th and 80 years ago today the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. And that day catapulted the United States into a fight that the British people had been fighting since 1939. And it ultimately brought British forces to places like Singapore and Burma in South Asia. And in heart and metaphor when that happened, they brought that girl, that voice, that song with them, they brought virulent with them. That's a context for our story today and here's the core of the story. It was Christmas 1962, 21 years after Pearl Harbor. I was a 20 year old college student in a singing group from a Christian college in Northern California and we had been invited to sing at a men's gathering at a church in Berkeley. So we drove the 90 miles from Santa Cruz, California up to Berkeley and we got done with our singing, had our breakfast or dinner, whatever it was, I can't quite remember. And then they introduced the speaker, the Japanese man. And this is how he began his talk. He said, my name is Mitsuo Fushida and I led the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I'm sitting there thinking, what in the world? How did this guy get here? And then he went on to tell his story and by the end of the time it was this profoundly moving illustration of the grace of God. Because after Pearl Harbor in December 41, then a few months, a plan was hatched with the help of an Army Air Corps general by the name of Jimmy Doolittle to attack the Japanese mainland by putting B25 bombers on aircraft carriers and getting in close enough to the mainland to be able to at least let the Japanese leadership know that they were vulnerable. And so they practiced with these bombers. I think they probably had to accommodate or change them in some way for short takeoffs and 80 young airmen volunteered along with general Doolittle to fly these missions. The challenge was the problem came to be that they were discovered early by Japanese military. And so they had to take off when they were off the coast of Japan. They had to take off 100 miles or more before they were supposed to. That led to the problem. They didn't have enough gas to get back to the ship. And so they understood that they would either this could have been a suicide mission. But they understood that they might crash or have to bail out over Japan or over Japanese occupied China. And that's what happened to numbers of them. Many of them were put in POW camps. And one of those young flyers who volunteered was a fellow from Oregon by the name of Jacob De Shaser. He ended up bailing out over China. And from 1942 to 1945 was a prisoner of war along with his friends. And they were just brutally attacked, brutally tortured, interrogated, flogged, starved, several of them died, several of them were executed. And during that time Jacob, who was the son of a minister but not really close in his faith walk, asked for a Bible. It's interesting because as he describes it, this is his telling, I begged my captors to get a Bible for me. He recalled and he wrote this in a little religious tract called I was a prisoner of Japan. And 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, he says, this is Jacob De Shaser. And I discovered that God had given me new spiritualize 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's natural to be cruel. One of the great things about his time there and a great maybe overstating it but one of the saving things of his time there is even though they were in these horrific conditions, there's something about being in a space like that with friends, with people on it, with a common mission or a common heart. There's something about walking together or knowing that you're one that has to be of help because there are many stories like that. And when I listen to that song by Vera Lynn which is very touching to me personally, I don't exactly know why. But when I listen to it, I love the part where she's singing to a crowd of servicemen and they join in. Here it is. Vera Lynn and these soldiers. When Jake the Shaser finally was released from the POW'd up he kept at the end of the war. He went back to Japan and there he went to Seattle Pacific University and actually became a minister. Let me pause there and go back to the other part of the story. Matsua Fushita, the leader of the attack on Pearl Harbor. If you've ever seen the movie Tora Tora Tora or Pearl Harbor, it's his notes actually from that attack that were the backstory for the making of those films. He went back to Japan was based and lived in Hiroshima. And for some reason one day before the atomic bomb was dropped on that city he was called back to Tokyo and so he survived that. At the end of the war when he went home he went back to rice farming. And along the way he met some of his old friends so this would have been in 1947-48. These flyer friends of Fushita were captured and sent to POW camps in Utah. What happened there next was amazing because his friends in that camp met a woman by the name of Peggy Kovel. Peggy Kovel had been a missionary kid. Her parents had been missionaries in Japan prior to World War II and in 1939 they fled to the Philippines. And there when the Japanese invaded she Peggy had been sent home as a young girl and the parents were captured by the Japanese and ultimately killed. But Peggy knew Japanese and she volunteered to go to these POW camps and talked to these prisoners and several of them came to faith. And after the war Fushita met some of them and he had heard this and he was grappling with those ideas and the story of Jesus that they presented. And then he was asked to come to Tokyo for the as a witness in the war crimes trials. And along the way somewhere in there he picked up this tract that Jacob De Shaser had written. And as a result of several of those things coming together Mitsuo Fushito came to faith. And later he and Jake De Shaser met and they became friends. How does that happen? How do people who are such fierce enemies for all the reasons that many of you would understand? How do enemies become friends? And when De Shaser was reading the scriptures his thought that he came to his understanding was that he had to do what Jesus said. He said in Matthew 543 and 44 you have heard that it was said this is Jesus. You've heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies to pray for those who treat you badly. As a result of that De Shaser ends up going back to Japan as a missionary himself. And Mitsuo Fushito same thing happens to him when he came upon the De Shaser tract. He said it was then that I met Jesus except of him as my personal savior. And it just is amazing that when these enemies became friends they ultimately started traveling together and speaking together. They traveled the world if I understand it correctly because both of them had found light in a dark place and their hearts were changed. There is something about the power of forgiveness that sort of rides on the wings of grace that does something in a person's heart that changes everything forever literally. So when it says in his Christmas season that when Jesus came and the light shined in darkness nobody's kidding there. That's the real deal because when forgiveness walks into the room hate has to run away. Mitsuo Fushito found that out. Jake De Shaser found that out. And God in his great I started to say great good humor but in his great grace and power put these two leaders of men together so that they together could lead others to a knowledge of Jesus Christ that could transform their lives. You know we started out talking about World War II and we end up talking about peace on earth toward men of goodwill. There is something joyous about that. And I think starting out with the song will meet again is entirely appropriate to illustrate the lives of Mitsuo Fushito and Jake De Shaser. I think we ought to go out on a joyous note given that thank you for listening thank you for subscribing thank you in this Christmas season thinking about what happens when enemies become friends and how might that happen in the world in which you live with people you know or even in your own heart and some spaces who knows. I think we ought to go out with well how about joy to the world this is dick folks I'll catch you later. you you you you