It’s always inspiring to hear of encounters with Christ that utterly transform a life. The case of Mitsuo Fuchida is a spectacular example of just such a conversion.
Fuchida was born in Japan in 1902 and grew up with a belief in Shintoism and Buddhism. At an early age he chose a military career, an honoured profession in a culture that valued power and authority but despised shame and weakness. In the Imperial Japan of his day such attitudes were magnified by a devotion to a god-like Emperor and a national desire to create an empire. Fuchida joined the Navy where, realising the potential of aircraft, he chose to become a pilot.
Gaining combat experience and expertise in bombing during Imperial Japan’s brutal invasion of China, Fuchida’s talents and skills were soon recognised by the Navy. Fearful that the Americans would strike against them, Japanese strategists began planning an overwhelming surprise attack on the American fleet based at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, and Fuchida became involved in the preparations. On Sunday 7th December 1941 he was the lead commander of 400 aircraft which devastated the fleet of still neutral America. Fuchida, now considered a national hero, was rewarded by a personal audience with Emperor Hirohito.
In the subsequent war, Fuchida found himself flying in many air battles in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Seeing so many of his colleagues killed around him, he began to feel that he was somehow being providentially protected. That view was reinforced when, staying in Hiroshima on 5th August 1945, he was suddenly summoned to Tokyo, just hours before the town was obliterated by the nuclear explosion.
With the surrender of Japan, Fuchida found himself shamed by the humiliating indignities that his once proud nation now had to endure. Reduced to living in poverty on a farm himself, he began to consider ways of avenging himself on the American occupiers.
Two events changed Fuchida’s life. In 1947 he met a former comrade who had just returned from imprisonment in the United States. Instead of the expected tale of brutality and abuse, Fuchida heard how his friend had been lovingly and graciously treated by Margaret ‘Peggy’ Covell, an 18-year-old volunteer worker amongst the prisoners. Peggy’s story was astonishing. Her missionary parents had been brutally executed by the Japanese in the Philippines and, for some time, Peggy had found herself filled with hatred towards all Japanese. Eventually, God had worked in her life and she had become not only able to forgive but also to love the people who had murdered her parents. Fuchida, with his deep belief that you must avenge a crime committed against you, found himself shaken.
A year later, still struggling with the idea of forgiveness, Fuchida was given a tract by Jacob DeShazer, a former American airman who had been brutally treated in captivity by the Japanese but who had come to faith in Christ and had returned to Japan as a missionary to declare God’s love to the nation. Puzzled by these separate accounts of a God who, in Christ, offered forgiveness, Fuchida began reading the Bible. Reading Luke’s account of the first Easter he found himself overwhelmed by Jesus’ words from the cross, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34, KJV). He committed himself to Christ.
In theory, Fuchida should have been baptised, discipled and encouraged into fellowship in a local church. Instead, with the zeal and courage once dedicated to the Emperor, Fuchida began witnessing almost immediately. His national reputation as a military figure meant that his conversion was widely announced and puzzled over.
Despite challenges, Fuchida grew in faith, Christian maturity and influence and began to be involved in evangelistic meetings in Japan, America and, ultimately, worldwide. He wrote books both about the war and his conversion, and soon became a widely respected speaker. He became good friends with Billy Graham and spoke at many of his rallies. When he gave his testimony in the States, Fuchida often had difficult and emotional encounters with those who had lost loved ones, either in the war with Japan and sometimes in the very Pearl Harbour attack he had led. He always pointed them to Christ.
For nearly 30 years Fuchida continued to witness for his faith, constantly declaring that the solution to the world’s problems was not war, but peace in Christ. He died in 1976 at the age of 73, leaving behind a wife, two children and an extraordinary legacy.
As an evangelist, I find three things in this remarkable account that are profoundly encouraging.
First, Fuchida’s conversion involved an unlikely individual. Thirty plus years in the militaristic culture of Imperial Japan had created a dedicated soldier utterly committed to an earthly monarch and his empire. Yet God turned around this man’s life. There’s an encouragement to pray for conversions, however improbable they may seem.
Second, Fuchida’s conversion involved a profound transformation. Sadly, there are many occasions when people claim to come to faith but show no real fruit. This conversion was not such an event. With Fuchida, hatred, bitterness and a desire for revenge were spectacularly replaced by love, peace and forgiveness. There’s an encouragement here not just to pray for professions of faith but for deeply and thoroughly transformed lives.
Finally, this was a conversion which involved the witness of others. Something decisive in Fuchida’s conversion was the witness, in words and life, of Peggy Covell and Jacob DeShazer, both of whom had not only received God’s life-changing forgiveness in Christ but wanted to share it. We are offered God’s grace freely but it comes with an obligation to share it. That is a principle that Fuchida understood and held to throughout his ministry as an evangelist. He told people that Christ had saved him. There’s an encouragement here for all of us who have received the gospel to share it with others.
Mitsuo Fuchida’s conversion was truly astonishing. May God grant us to see those we know to be converted and transformed too.
J.John
Reverend Canon
