Commentary; Posted: 12/1/04

Pearl Harboróthe aftermath

Rev. John C. Blackford
Religion Columnist

Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941óìA day of infamyî ódeclared President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he spoke by radio to a stunned nation a day later.

The country reeled from this damaging attack on our Navy Base in Hawaii, but we did not buckle.

Our Pacific fleet was shattered in what was a great victory for the Japanese. We began to struggle for freedom and democracy on two fronts, the Pacific and Europe, that lasted until 1945.

Leading the Pearl Harbor aerial attack was Captain Mitsuo Fuchida of the Japanese Imperial Navy. Captain Fuchida was involved uniquely in two other epochal events in the war in the Pacific. In August of 1945 he was on a flight which took him near the Japanese city of Hiroshima when he witnessed the awesome sight of the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

That event, plus the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a few days later, brought a sudden conclusion to World War II. Ironically, he was present for both the beginning of the war and the effective ending.

A month afterward at the signing of the peace treaty on the deck of the U.S. Missouri, Captain Fuchida was there as a representative of the defeated nation. Historians believe Mitsuo Fuchida is the only person present at these three great World War II eventsóPearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima and the signing of the peace treaty.

Captain Fuchida could have been executed as a war criminal. But his life changed radically. Reached by Christian missionaries, he converted from his Shinto/Buddist religion to a faith in Christ. With other Japanese airmen who had found Christ, he formed and led a ministry called ìSky Pilots,î which reached out with a message of forgiveness and hope to their people.

Several years after the end of the war he came to this country to apologize to America for Pearl Harbor and the war. This writer heard him speak through an interpreter to a crowded Minneapolis auditorium in a meeting sponsored by Youth For Christ. With emotion, he asked for our forgiveness, and thanked America for the compassionate way we treated his nation after the war.

Although the writer was not on the U.S. Missouri for the treaty signing, as a Navy/Marine Corps Chaplain he boarded the battleship when it returned to its home base at Norfolk, VA shortly afterward, and stood at the very place the leaders of the two nations signed the historic document. Later a commemorative plaque was inserted into the deck, and may be seen today by visitors.

Many changes have come to Japan since World War II. No longer is their emperor regarded as God, and the nation, which has admired American ways for a century, has under our protection prospered. Today it has one of the worldís largest economies, and is a strong friend of our country. It is slowly opening up to the ministry of the churches. Mitsuo Fuchida died some years ago, but his influence continues.

63 years after the tragedy of Pearl Harbor we remember with sorrow the losses of that war, but we are thankful for the many positive aspects of the aftermath.

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