Posted on 09/18/2011 1:22:21 PM PDT by SGW
This man [ Mitsuo Fuchida ] who led the first wave of airplane attacks on Pearl Harbor during the Second World War was honored with United States citizenship in 1966. His attack caused the deaths of 2500 Americans the morning of December 7, 1941.
“After World War II ended, Fuchida became an evangelist Christian preacher and frequently travelled to the United States to minister to the Japanese expatriate community. He became a United States citizen in 1966.”
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
I’m such a fool. I always go to these links without thinking. Now my computer is slow.
I guess my point is that no one should be rewarded with US citizenship when they killed Americans on that scale. This is ridiculous.
The message I get from this is that the more you crap all over America even by killing thousands of Americans the more we will reward you. I live in Arizona and let me tell you that out southern border is a blood bath with roughly 10,000 killed every year. Some illegals come over the border go on crime or killing sprees and then go back or are caught and sent back only to start again.
Now we have an immigration policy that seeks to give those killing Americans citizenship. There is such poor database enforcement that police have no idea who the bad guys are.
The point I got from this article is that whether it was 50 years ago where this Japanese guy helped kill 2500 Americans or now where narco terorrists regularly kill Americans, it seems that US citizenship does not stand for much these days.
The U.S allowed the Loyalists to come back to their homes.
We made former Confederates U.S. citizens again.
A former Nazi ran our space program.
The point is that wars end. Bitterness remains for sure, but you move on as best you can.
But I totally get how this will make some vets very upset.
After the war, Fuchida was called on to testify at the trials of some of the Japanese military for Japanese war crimes. This infuriated him as he believed this was little more than “victor’s justice”. Convinced that the Americans had treated the Japanese the same way and determined to bring that evidence to the next trial, in the spring of 1947, Fuchida went to Uraga Harbor near Yokosuka to meet a group of returning Japanese prisoners of war. He was surprised to find his former flight engineer, Kazuo Kanegasaki, who all had believed had died in the Battle of Midway. When questioned, Kanegasaki told Fuchida that they were not tortured or abused, much to Fuchida’s disappointment,,,, then went on to tell him of a young lady who served them with the deepest love and respect, but whose parents, missionaries, had been killed by Japanese soldiers on the island of Panay in the Philippines.
For Fuchida, this was inexplicable, as in the Bushido code revenge was not only permitted, it was a responsibility for an offended party to carry out revenge to restore honor. The murderer of one’s parents would be a sworn enemy for life. He became almost obsessed trying to understand why anyone would treat their enemies with love and forgiveness.
In the fall of 1948, Fuchida was passing by the bronze statue of Hachiko at the Shibuya Station when he was handed a pamphlet about the life of Jacob DeShazer, a member of the Doolittle Raid who was captured by the Japanese after his B-25 Mitchell ran out of fuel over occupied China. In the pamphlet “I Was a Prisoner of Japan” DeShazer, himself a former U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sergeant and bombardier, told his story of imprisonment, torture and his account of an “awakening to God”. It was from this experience that Fuchida reportedly decided to pursue a post-wartime role as a Christian missionary.
In 1951, he, along with a colleague, published an account of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. In 1952, Fuchida toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. Fuchida remained dedicated to a similar initiative as the group for the remainder of his life.
They guy wasn’t a terrorist murderer,, he was a Navy carrier pilot,, doing exactly what carrier pilots do. He came to embrace the Christian roots of American culture and to embrace it, and spread it. Give it a rest.
I’d rather have him as a citizen than ‘vato loco’.
Again, this guy spearheaded the killing of 2500 Americans. That is what I am stuck on. No one should be rewarded for that regardless of how sorry they are. This was not done by mistake. It was intentional.
It sounds as if he first served his county admirably during the war. He then spent his remaining years serving God in the most effective and humbling way possible. He was naturalized only 20 years after the war ended. Was there a protest then? It is pointless to dredge this up 45 years later as a flawed analogy to the problems with our current immigration system. Frankly, the U.S. might be far better off with more immigrants like Mr. Fuchida.
The following is an account of his post-war activities:
For Fuchida, this was inexplicable, as in the Bushido code revenge was not only permitted, it was a responsibility for an offended party to carry out revenge to restore honor. The murderer of one's parents would be a sworn enemy for life. He became almost obsessed trying to understand why anyone would treat their enemies with love and forgiveness.
In the fall of 1948, Fuchida was passing by the bronze statue of Hachiko at the Shibuya Station when he was handed a pamphlet about the life of Jacob DeShazer, a member of the Doolittle Raid who was captured by the Japanese after his B-25 Mitchell ran out of fuel over occupied China. In the pamphlet "I Was a Prisoner of Japan"[7] DeShazer, himself a former U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sergeant and bombardier, told his story of imprisonment, torture and his account of an "awakening to God". It was from this experience that Fuchida reportedly decided to pursue a post-wartime role as a Christian missionary.
In 1951, he, along with a colleague, published an account of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. In 1952, Fuchida toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. Fuchida remained dedicated to a similar initiative as the group for the remainder of his life.
In February 1954, Reader's Digest published Fuchida's story of the attack on Pearl Harbor.[8] Fuchida also wrote and co-wrote books including, From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha (aka From Pearl Harbor to Calvary) and a 1955 expansion of his 1951 book Midway (aka Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story). Fuchida's story is also recounted in God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor (The Warriors) by Donald Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon and Gordon W. Prange.
Fuchida died of complications caused by diabetes in Kashiwara, near Osaka on 30 May 1976 at the age of 73.
In previous centuries of warring states - the defeated nation(s)’ territories would have been taken by the victors as the spoils of war. Every citizen of that defeated nation would have become a citizen of the occupier.
The US did not adopt the old Roman and European models - but if it had - the gentleman would have become a citizen by default - rather than application & in doing so, embracing the US Constitution and our Judeo-Christian traditions.
At the substantial risk of sounding like a total dick, he was a uniformed enemy combatant, operation under (as far as he knew) lawful orders, executing a surgical strike against a military target.
He acquitted himself honorably after the war.
Dresden is also thinking of making Bomber Harris a postumous citizen, lol!
Damn site is a resource hog.
I hit the print button to get out and read the article.
Ordinary German soldiers were not pursued for war crimes. If you are referring to the ones who participated in the Nazi genocide, they were prosecuted for participating in deliberate acts of mass-murder against prisoners and innocent civilians, which is a whole different ball game from killing the other side's soldiers on the battlefield...
He was a soldier and acted honorably.
This is about what happened afterward...
I thought is was just me.
I had to print the article and get out of that resource pig.
A Jap was flying for the Krauts?
“Why did we pursue German soldiers for war crimes”
We pursued the ones who came into towns,, rounded up innocent civilians, and murdered them. That was pure murder. Thats why we pursue them.
Furthermore, he had a deep postwar friendship with some Doolittle raiders. If guys like that can give it a rest, you should too.
Last,, by some accounts, after he came here, he found a way to give a million dollars a year to local governments on Oahu as an attempt to make restitution. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Did Werner Von Braun ever show such remorse, or do anything similar for the slave labor he used?
The United States was right to “grant” him citizenship.
He was a legal combatant, wasn’t tried in the Hague nor even a candidate for the Hague.
He converted to Christianity, became a preacher and by all accounts was an upright man.
I’m fine with him being an American.
The crux of the article is why do we have a broken immigration system that rewards the unjust and lawbreakers.
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