Here’s one story
NOVEMBER 8, 2007 (THURSDAY) – Tuesday’s blog made mention of Okinawa and the extended battle there that resulted in great loss of life on both sides in 1945.
Twenty-two years after the war, in 1967, the church at Rockport sent me to Okinawa to be with missionaries Dwight and Anne Dudley and their family, and I went along with them in their work for about a week. I led a youth retreat on a weekend (several military young men on their way to Vietnam were there) and went with the missionaries and several military people on a boat (named, “The Messenger”) to other islands in the Ryukyu chain. It was quite an experience, at the end of each day, seeing every person (500 to 600 people) in a village come out to the community center to hear the gospel for the first time. I shall always be grateful for the inivtation from the missionaries and the support of the church at Rockport in making the trip possible.
On the way over, on the plane, I sat beside a Japanese gentleman, Mister Hasime Onishi, who was a petroleum buyer and a frequent traveler. We had a long trip, so we talked a lot. He told me he had flown the surrender plane at the end of WW2. The diplomats boarded his aircraft, painted so as to be recognized, in Tokyo, and they flew to Manilla for negotiations. The plane was refueled by Americans on the ground in Okinawa. On the way back to Tokyo, they stopped in Okinawa again to refuel. There was a mixup about litres and gallons, and therefore their plane ran out of fuel as it approached Tokyo on the return flight. It crashed in Sagami Bay. When dawn came, the survivors were met by the sight of machine guns trained on them by Japanese soldiers on the shore. According to Mister Onishi, the final settlement of surrender was delayed 24 hours because of that.
After my return home to Rockport, a local man, Frank Covarubias, told me he had been stationed at Okinawa at that time and had pictures of the surrender planes (there was more than one), and the diplomats posing for photographs under the plane’s wing. He gave me copies and I sent them to the pilot in Japan. He had never seen the pictures before and wrote to me, thanking me for them, and making notations on the pictures. He said the pictures had awakened a great curiosity on the part of his teen-age son and he had been busy answering his questions.
He had already told me his children were attending Christian schools in Japan, operated by Protestant missionaries.
War is a terrible thing. It always has a human side.