Word: fuchida
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Navy Captain Mitsuo Fuchida was one of Japan's most famous flying officers of World War II. He led the first wave of bombers in the raid on Pearl Harbor, then circled high over Oahu for nearly three hours, directing the attack. He was later wounded at the Battle of Midway and spent the rest of the war as air operations officer at Japanese navy headquarters. At war's end, he went back to his farm near Osaka, sullen and bitter over Japan's defeat...
This week, his bitterness outgrown, ex-Captain Fuchida, 49, was visiting the U.S. and preparing for a new life-as a Christian missionary. His sponsor and future partner is the Rev. Elmer Sachs, director of Sky Pilots International, a project for getting aviation-minded youth interested in religion as well as aircraft. But the man who indirectly converted him is another airman, ex-Sergeant Jacob DeShazer, a former Doolittle raider who is now working as a Free Methodist missionary in Japan...
DeShazer, an Oregon turkey farmer who survived three years in Japanese prison camps, was at first as bitter about the Japanese as Fuchida was about the Americans. But DeShazer began to read the Bible during his imprisonment; his attitude changed, and he returned to Japan in 1949 to preach Christianity to his old enemies. Fuchida was intrigued when he read about DeShazer's arrival. He bought a Bible himself. When he read the New Testament story of Christ forgiving his enemies, his old hostility dropped. He became a Christian and wrote several tracts (one title: From Pearl Harbor...
...next few months Fuchida plans to travel throughout the U.S. with Evangelist Sachs, watching how Sky Pilots International operates. Since Sachs founded his movement in 1945, some 6,000 boys and young men have joined the "squadrons" he establishes in cooperating churches. To get his sky pilot's silver wings, a boy must: 1) attend church or Sunday school for six successive weeks, 2) memorize ten scriptural verses having to do with salvation, 3) "Accept Christ Jesus as his Savior," 4) successfully fly his own model airplane in competition. Gold wings are awarded to everyone who brings a convert...
When Sky Pilot Fuchida goes back to Japan, Evangelist Sachs hopes to provide him with a helicopter to help in setting up the Japanese organization. Says Sachs: "We're honestly trying to build him up as the Apostle Paul of Japan." In the international Sky Pilots organization, ex-Captain Fuchida will have the rank of a one-star general...