A Missionary to His Captors
Illustration
by Emerson Colaw

The attack of Pearl Harbor was led by Captain Fuchida. Later in the war, when General Doolittle carried out his famous raid on Tokyo, one of the American men shot down was Sergeant Jacob De Shazer. He spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp and received brutal treatment. After the war, he returned to the states, entered seminary, and prepared himself to go as a missionary to Japan. There he and Captain Fuchida met. The Captain was puzzled as to why anyone would come back to Japan after what the Sergeant had gone through. Next, he met a young missionary woman, daughter of two missionaries who had been beheaded during the war. He found all this unbelievable. Why would these people want to spend their lives with their enemies? He secured a copy of the Bible to see what is was all about. When he came to that passage where Jesus, hanging on the cross, prays for his enemies saying, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do," he understood. Sergeant De Shazer and the young woman were doing what their leader, and Lord, had done.

Beliefs of a United Methodist Christian, p. 32, by Emerson Colaw