Word: aoki
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...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...
Undaunted. Aoki slipped back to Okinawa, used intermediaries to buy up a wooded island called Yagaji, just off the peninsula shore. Two wealthy Japanese Christians donated money to build a central hall and two dormitories. A new colony, called Airaku-en (Garden of the Haven of Love) was started, and Aoki became its manager. The following year the Japanese government decided to use Aoki's site for its leprosarium, built a hospital and several other buildings. The colony's population jumped from 42 to 242, and some blamed Aoki for the government's brutally efficient gathering process...
Full Cycle. Out of nowhere to Okinawa came World War II. The Japanese turned on Christians, treated Aoki as a spy, and drove him out of the colony. He tried living on an offshore rock, got the police to jail him until they needed the jail for criminals, finally went to live in an abandoned tomb. Later, he dragged himself from his tomb to have a leg amputated. Making his way back to Airaku-en, he found his colony demolished by U.S. bombs (the U.S. thought Yagaji a submarine base) and his old companions back in the caves...
...fighting had no sooner stopped, however, than Aoki was back on his one foot, organizing the colonists in rebuilding Airaku-en. The U.S. Army arrived with Quonset huts, clothing and food. Aoki was made a lay reader of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.. acted as minister until the Rev. Luke Kimoto, a 25-year-old Episcopal deacon from Japan (who does not have leprosy) became its first permanent minister...