Posted on 12/08/2011 5:49:37 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
This is the incredible story of Mitsuo Fuchida, lead pilot of the December 7, 1941, raid on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida was the one who shouted the war cry, “Tora, Tora, Tora!”
Mitsuo Fuchida fought the United States throughout WWII and was intimately involved in the planning and leadership of the Japanese war effort as flight commander and later as a senior operations officer.
After the war, Fuchida was a defeated warrior in occupied Japan, farming to meet the needs of his family. He was also the only one to return to Japan after the bombing.
In 1950, Fuchida miraculously came to know Jesus Christ as Savior through a tract handed to him while exiting a train in Tokyo. The tract was entitled, “I Was a Prisoner of Japan,” written by Jacob DeShazer (read it here)who was one of the famous Doolittle Raiders. DeShazer trusted Christ as his Savior while held captive by Japan for 40 months. DeShazer went to Japan in 1948 as a missionary and preached to the nation who held him captive.
Fuchida faithfully served Jesus Christ as an evangelist until his death in 1976.
(Excerpt) Read more at stonethepreacher.com ...
Neither is Atta and his likes.
Also, it's pretty interesting that he played such a huge part in his country's defeat in WWII. Without the Pearl Harbor attack, we may not have had adequate naval power in the pacific as our fleet was all pretty much worn out and obsolete at that time. The destruction forced us to upgrade.
Missionaries can change the minds of our bitterest foes and turn them to Christ and then forgiveness.
You should copy this and show it to the man who talked about Syria last night.
Jesus already paid the price for that man's sins, just as He did yours. The only requirement for God's mercy is to repent and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Mat 6:12 (TEB) "Forgive us the wrongs that we have done, as we forgive the wrongs others have done us."
Luke 6:37 (NIV) "...Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
Mat 6:14-15 (NIV) "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But, if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."
Who was that? I must have missed it.
Not really true. The decision to rebuild the fleet was taken in 1940, following the fall of France. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Ocean_Navy_Act
Tora Tora Tora (actually Tiger Tiger Tiger) was not a war cry. It was the code word that they had the element of surprise.
Oops! Sorry. I meant to post to Pan. (I need my coffee before I continue on FR this morning.)
What an amazing story. Great to see how God works thru mystery ways. That reminds me of another story I heard during the Gulf War. Bibles were forbidden but someone had smuggle them in or they were being shipped secretly. I believe an Iranian official found some and started to read it and could not stop until he finally gave his life to the Lord.
Thank you for posting this. You helped my day begin with a smile.
You may not have, but God has.
The Iowa Class BBs were authorized in 1934.
http://www.navalhistory.org/2010/07/19/two-ocean-navy-bill-becomes-law-19-july-1940/
Guess that depends on who you ask. I'm just sayin'.
But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matthew 5:44-45
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
Mark 11:25
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." ... How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Luke 6:35-38;42
I WAS A PRISONER OF JAPAN
by Jacob DeShazer (1950)
“I was a prisoner of Japan for forty long months, thirty-four of them in solitary confinement
When I flew as a member of General Jimmy Doolittle’s squadron on the first raid over Japan on April 18th, 1942, my heart was filled with bitter hatred for the people of that nation. When our plane ran out of gas, and the members of the crew of my plane had to parachute down into Japanese-held territory in China and were captured by the enemy, the bitterness of my heart against my captors seemed more than I could bear.
Taken to Tokyo with the survivors of another of our planes, we were imprisoned and beaten, half-starved, and denied by solitary confinement even the comfort of association with one another, these terrible tortures taking place at Tokyo, Shanghai, Nanking and Peiping. Three of my buddies, Dean Hallmark, Fill Farrow and Harold Spatz, were executed by a firing squad about six months after our capture, and fourteen months later another of them, Bob Meder [a strong Christian], died of slow starvation. My hatred for the Japanese people nearly drove me crazy.
It was soon after Meder’s death that I began to ponder the cause of such hatred between members of the human race. I wondered what it was that made the Japanese hate the Americans, and what made me hate the Japanese. my thoughts turned toward what I had heard about Christianity changing hatred between human beings into real brotherly love, and I was gripped with a strange longing to examine the Christian’s Bible to see if I could find the secret. I begged my captors to get a Bible for me. At last, in the month of May, 1944, a guard brought the Book, but told me I could have it for only three weeks.
I eagerly began to read its pages. Chapter after chapter gripped my heart. In due time I came to the books of the prophets, and found that their every writing seemed focused on a divine Redeemer from sin, one who was to be sent from heaven to be born in the form of a human babe. Their writings so fascinated me that I read them again and again until I had earnestly studied them through six times. Then I went on into the New Testament, and there read of the birth of Jesus Christ, the one who actually fulfilled the very prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and the other Old Testament writers. My heart rejoiced as I found confirmed in Acts 10:43: “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name, whosoever believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins.” After I had carefully read this book of the Acts, I continued on into the study of the epistle Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome.
On June 8th, 1944, the words in Romans 10:9 stood out boldly before my eyes: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” In that very moment God gave me grace to confess my sins to Him, and He forgave me all my sins and saved me for Jesus’ sake, even as I later found that His Word again promises so clearly in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
How my heart rejoiced in my newness of spiritual life, even though my body was suffering so terribly from the physical beatings and lack of food. But suddenly I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes, and that when I looked at the Japanese officers and guards who had starved and beaten me and my companions so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity. I realized that these Japanese did not know anything about my Saviour and that if Christ is not in a heart, it is natural to be cruel. I read in my Bible that while those who crucified Jesus on the cross had beaten Him and spit upon Him before He was nailed to the cross, He tenderly prayed in His moment of excruciating suffering, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And now from the depths of my heart, I too prayed for God to forgive my torturers, and I determined by the aid of Christ to do my best to acquaint the Japanese people with the message of salvation that they might become as other believing Christians. With His love controlling my heart, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians took on a living meaning: “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.”
A year passed by, and during that year, the memories of the weeks I had been permitted to spend with my Bible grew sweeter and sweeter day as I was sitting in my solitary confinement cell in Peiping, I became very sick. My heart was paining me, even as Meder had told me his was paining him just before he died of starvation. I slid down onto my knees and began to pray. The guards rushed in and began to punish me, but I kept right on praying. Finally they let me alone. God in that hour revealed unto me how to endure suffering.
At last freedom came. On August 20th, 1945, American parachutists dropped onto the prison grounds and released us from our cells. We were flown back to the United States and placed in hospitals where we slowly regained our physical strength.
I have completed my training in a Christian College, God having clearly commanded me: “Go, teach the Japanese people the way of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ,” and am now in Japan as a missionary, with the one single purpose to lead me - to make Christ known.
I am sending this testimony to people everywhere, with the earnest prayer that a great host of people may confess Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour.”
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2011/12/watch-eight-minutes-of-kang-je-gyus-my-way.php
I’ll have to look it up. It sounds very interesting. I know it wasn’t his choice but that guy changed sides enough to qualify for the GOP primary.
That is amazing.
Then neither are you.
Matthew 6:15; Luke 6:37
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