A Purpose For Life
by Chaplain Jim Robinson
Most of you know the story of Saul's Damascus road experience. It is an exciting story of how the powerful experience of meeting God can change a man or woman's ultimate goals of life and cause them to do a 180 degree switch in direction. Saul went from being a leading authority figure who persecuted Christians, to becoming an apostle serving the Lord Jesus Christ and proclaiming the message of the Savior come to redeem sinners.
We old folks will remember (for as long as our minds are working!) what happened on December 7, 1941. In the Pearl Harbor attack, much of the U.S. Fleet was put out of commission by either being sunk or damaged. I think because this is July and we recently celebrated the 4th that my mind has focused on battles our country has fought and more recent examples of men being confronted by God and having their lives changed as a result of the encounter. One such man is Jacob DeShazer, a man I am privileged to know personally. Jake was one of the Doolittle raiders who was shot down and captured by the Japanese. In a Japanese prison camp, starving and tortured, he formed an extreme hatred for the Japanese. But he came to Christ in the prison and after the war went back to Japan as a missionary.
In the early 1970s I was involved in a ministry to youth in the Concord, California area. We converted an old telephone company motor pool into a big barn of a building to use as a church. We wanted to have some significant event to launch greater community awareness of the ministry. Our small staff had discussed several possibilities at length. We were praying about what to do when suddenly an idea came to me.
The film, Tora! Tora! Tora! had just been released. I had not seen it but felt the Holy Spirit was telling me to use it! This was because I remembered Jake DeShazer telling me about the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mitsuo Fuchida, coming to his house in Japan and how he became a Christian. He came to the DeShazer’s residence after Jake had completed a 40-day time of fasting and prayer asking God to make him fruitful. Fuchida had come as a result of picking up a tract on the subway of Jake’s testimony of 40 months in prison and there committing his life to Christ. I thought Fuchida was probably portrayed in the film Tora! Tora! Tora!
I also remembered seeing in a Christian film catalog a short film entitled, One Came Back, about how this man who led the Pearl Harbor attack became a Christian after the war and came back to Hawaii as a Christian evangelist. So the idea was immediately formed in my mind. We would show Tora! Tora! Tora! and One Came Back and maybe we could even get Jake DeShazer and the former Japanese Air Group Commander to come and share their testimonies. I phoned the mission board Jake was with to get his phone number. They said Jake was in the States and told me how to get in contact with him. I phoned Jake and he was glad to come to the San Francisco/Bay Area to participate. However, he told me that Mitsuo Fuchida was far too frail to travel out of Japan.
I called a film company and requested to rent Tora! Tora! Tora! I was told this wasn't possible because it was only being shown in approved selected theaters and not available to anyone else. The representative of the company was adamant that it could not be rented. I finally asked him for the name and phone number of the company CEO. His office was in Hollywood and I managed to get him on the telephone. We must have talked for at least 45 minutes. I explained to him how and why I wanted to use the film. He finally told me that I had been informed correctly and that they just couldn't rent the film to us. However, he told me, "I am intrigued at what you are doing. I will send you the film at no charge and you can splice the Christian film onto it anyway you want to. All I ask is that you return the film when you are finished with it.” Of course, I still had not even seen the film. There was just this confidence that the Holy Spirit was putting the whole thing together.
When we received the film, we previewed it and realized that it was going to be great! So we showed Tora! Tora! Tora! with One Came Back added to the end of it, then Jake DeShazer spoke. It was a really memorable event. One friend, a Presbyterian Pastor, referred to it as a high point of his spiritual life.
Mitsuo Fuchida went through a spiritual revolution in his life as he yielded his life to Jesus Christ. He did that primarily because of his contacts with Jake DeShazer and Peggy Covell. Peggy Covell was the daughter of missionaries to Japan who were beheaded by the Japanese military. She ministered to the needs of Japanese prisoners in POW camps in the States. When the POWs asked her why she did this, she said, “Because Japanese soldiers killed my parents.” Mitsuo Fuchida was dumbfounded by the love she expressed to Japanese prisoners he knew who had been POWs.
The wonderful truth is that we can all die to ourselves and our own desires and be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of His resurrection; to share in His suffering and become like Him in His death, in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.” (Philippians 3:10-11 ) When this happens in our lives, we are well on the way to being a true follower of Jesus Christ. What greater purpose could we possibly have?
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