Stoney faces

Sunday the 7th of December 1941 described by President Roosevelt as the day that will live in infamy..the Japanese without declaring war launched a ferocious airborne attack (On Pearl harbor). The man commanding the Japanese air raid was a 39 year old Mitsuo Fuchida,
he’s the man who said “Tora! Tora! Tora!”. Extraordinarily he survived the war. With Japan’s defeat, he became a bitter and disillusioned man.

But one day he was passing through Tokyo railway station and he was given a tract called ‘I was a prisoner of Japan’. And it was a story of Jake (Jacob) DeShazer.. a prisoner of war in Japan, he had been brutally treated by his Japanese captors and he had come to hate the Japanese with visceral hatred. And yet Jake had been changed. While he was a prisoner he had read the Bible and he met with Jesus Christ. The Jesus who does change people.

Well Mitsuo, he read the tract and against his better judgement he bought a bible. He read the bible and he too met with Jesus Christ, he too was converted wonderfully.

And In time Mitsuo and Jake met. When they met they embraced. Men who had been filled with hatred embraced in Love, men who had been enemies welcomed each other as brothers in Christ.

And what does the Gospel do? It makes enemies friends, it heals old divisions. And it turns hatred to love. So much so that the world has to take notice.

As Mitsuo said; “I will give anything to retract my actions at Pearl Harbor but it’s impossible. Instead I now work at striking a death blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies and that hatred cannot be uprooted without Jesus Christ, He is the only answer”