Word: aoki
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When 17-year-old Yasujiro Aoki was told that he had leprosy, he did what a devout Buddhist should. Dressed in white robes and carrying a walking stick, he made a lengthy pilgrimage to the 88 holy places of Buddhism on his native Japanese island of Shikoku, visiting each three times. But at the end of the last lap, having found no cure, he did what a devout Buddhist should not: he turned in at the gate of an Anglican missionary hospital...
Religion Spurned. He could hardly have picked a more difficult place for his labors. The last missionary who had tried to help Okinawa's destitute victims had been deported for meddling. When Aoki arrived, the afflicted were either kept hidden by their families or left on the beaches to starve. Many of them managed to live by creeping into stores, threatening to touch the goods on display unless the storekeeper paid them off with food...
...Aoki made his headquarters in a cave by the ocean, secretly began rounding up his fellow sufferers and taking them back to his peninsula. There, unnoticed by the islanders, they built crude shelters and lived on food that Aoki bought with his slim funds. His recruits at first spurned his religion, since by Okinawan tradition leprosy was considered an evidence of evil, on the part of either the sufferer or his ancestors. Aoki countered by reciting Christ's absolution of the blind man: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should...
Lowest Point. Aoki's colony was making quiet progress when the islanders were suddenly aroused by a Japanese plan to build a leprosarium on Okinawa. They burned the lumber for the buildings, finally forced Tokyo to postpone the plan. Then an enterprising newspaper printed a story about Aoki's work, and nearby farmers marched on the colony, pulled the huts down with ropes (they were afraid to touch the boards) and burned them. Aoki's small band got until sundown to get off Okinawa. They fled by boat to an uninhabited island off the coast to start...
Vincent S. Aoki of Honolulu; Geoffrey T. Chalmers of Gambier, Ohio; Roger L. Clifton of Longmeadow, Mass.; Henry C. Dyer of St. Louis, Mo.; Harry K. Eldridge of Albany, N. Y.; Sigo Falk of Pittsburgh, Pa.; John W. Fowler of Naugatuck, Conn.; Robert H. Jaffe of Jamaica, L. I.; John R. Lind, of Wilmette, Ill.; Peter W. Macky of Paget, Bermuda; Arnold Marglin of Hollywood, Cal.; Arthur W. Martin of Seattle, Wash.; Lester R. Moulton, Marblehead, Mass.; Stewart Ogden, Louisville, Ky.; Harold P. Santmire of Buffalo, N. Y.; Stephen L. Singer of New Rochelle, N. Y.; Glenn E. Sisler...