Japan Revisited

Steve Metcalf

Sitting on a coach which was making a ninety minute tortuous drive in teeming rain from the British Embassy to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Yokohama. The leader of our group Mrs Keiko Holmes, speaking on the guide’s microphone. Thanked God for the rain, and then began to relate in faltering but good English, her amazing story of how God had given her the vision and purpose to launch the “Agape Ministries”

She was born in little mountain village on the borders of Mie Prefecture and Wakayama, where few outsiders ever ventured. Little terraced rice fields and orange groves supported the hardy lives of the struggling farmers. There was also the copper mine, which gave some employment. A large graveyard marked the tragic deaths of so many who had had lost their lives in the mine. There was also one curious but unpretentious grave of 16 British POWs who had died working in the mine during the war. Upon leaving school, Keiko had moved to Tokyo to University where she fell in love with an English aviation pilot. After graduation she married and they set up home in Croydon London where they had two little boys. Her husband’s Christian life, which at first became an intriguing mystery soon led to her conversion.. His sudden death in an plane crash in Bangladesh plunged her life into despair. Living alone with two boys in a strange land, having to do all the paper work and make the daily decisions was God’s way of preparing her for the work He had for her to do.

After her husband’s tragic death, she paid a visit to her home village. The copper mine had closed, the retired miners and the company had built a magnificent little garden with a monumental grave to the sixteen British soldiers who had died. Here in a remote mountain valley where everything was Buddhist stood a lonely white cross. These POW’s too had worked alongside then Japanese miners, a number of them were just 15 year olds conscripted from Junior High School. An extraordinary thing is that subsequently a number of the 140 prison camps have followed suit and have built graves or put up plaques to commemorate the POW’s who died in Japan. The Japanese superstitiously believe in the spirits of the dead and its important to look after their graves. As Keiko thought about this she felt God was giving her a vision to let the relatives and friends of the sixteen soldiers know about this. When she got back to London she set about to try and contact these people .She found terrible animosity against the Japanese. But she persisted and when she turned up at the POW reunion at the Barbican, she was met with hostility and anger and turned away! But God led her to speak to one of the ex POW’s from the copper mine, who looked dumbstruck at her photos that she showed him. There was this beautiful garden with the names of his fellow prisoners who had died engraved in granite. He soon dug up a few more of his friends and they arranged to introduce her to the relatives living in the north-east of England. The POWs and relatives pleaded with her to take them out to Japan and show her the grave.

With no funds of her own. She then plunged into fund raising, the British and Japanese Embassies didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The rich Japanese companies were also opposed, but through persistence and prayer miraculously the funds came in for the first group of POW’s to visit the grave. The Bishop of Coventry himself an ex POW backed her and went on a pilgrimage.. Some of the ex POW’s were converted and true peace and reconciliation came shining through.. The soldiers put forward her name for an OBE. The Queen further invited her to the reception for the young emperor and his wife. She then was given an extraordinary interview with the empress to tell her story. Over the last eight years she has taken over 300 POW’s to Japan. “Agape Ministries” has spread to Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia & Australia..

Soon after our retirement in 1990 after 38 years in Japan we settled in London. Keiko asked Evelyn & Stephen to go weekly to Croydon to teach a Japanese Bible class for Japanese Ladies, who met in her home. Time and again she urged us to go with the POWs to Japan. Stephen had spoken on a couple of occasions at her big reconciliation meeting in the city. This year we went on the Pilgrimage with 22 others. Stephen of course had been a POW. There was Sir Sam Falle, 84 yrs, who as a young navy lieutenant whose destroyer was sunk, he floated in the sea for 24 hours before being rescued by a Japanese naval ship. When we flew into Tokyo, the man who pulled Sir Sam out of the sea was there to meet him; all the way from Wakanai. He is a Christian, and as he told me. He became a Christian through some of his officers in the navy, who pre-war had studied English from missionaries and had been converted. Another was Frank Starkey 85 yrs, who was on a “POW Hell ship” crammed into the hold and being taken to Japan. The ship was sunk by the US Air force. Most of the prisoners went down with the ship. He floated in the sea hanging to a raft for 48 hrs and was pulled out of the water by a Philipino fishing boat which passed his way at 2.00 am, when he had all but given up hope. He was handed over to the Japanese and put in a POW camp in Manila.

Then there was Jan Ruff from Adelaide Australia, who was Dutch and only 19 years old when she and 8 others were taken by the Japanese in Java and put in an army brothel as a sex slave. She was raped night and day. After 50 years of silence she testified in Tokyo at the war crimes tribunal. She never lost her faith and used to constantly pray . “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” She gave her testimony at a Sunday church service in one of the towns we visited. At the end of the service a Christian Japanese lady got up and told how her father was hung after the war crimes tribunal She has never been told what his crime was. There has been an official silence on all these matters in Japan. After the service Jan and this lady embraced. No one in the church knew about her father. Everybody was deeply moved.

The Agape party started off in Kyoto. We were met by a Japanese Pastor who came up to Stephen and welcomed us warmly saying Miss Yamashita was from his church and he prayed for the OMF work in Taiwan. One of the prominent leaders of the Agape work in Kyoto was a Southern Baptist Pastor who invited Stephen to preach twice at his church in Osaka on the Sunday. Back in the early 1950’s I had envied the Southern Baptists who had built lovely churches and filled them. However here was a church that had seen all its members move away. This gifted middle aged pastor, who gave up his vocation as a High School Teacher to go into the ministry is having to start up this church from scratch, and its no easier than when we started back in 1950s.

Stephen spoke on many occasions on reconciliation. It was unique for the Agape group to have someone who could speak in Japanese, as interpretation is a long drawn out process. When we arrived in Hiroshima, Stephen spoke at the cenotaph in the Peace Park. The horror and the destruction of the Atomic Bomb is hard to grasp and mind boggling to say the least. It had given all of us POW’s instant freedom, but at such a price. Stephen had visited Hiroshima in 1952. It was already all rebuilt then but only a shadow of the magnificent City it is today. A large typhoon blew and washed away most of the contamination a week after the bomb was dropped. It is a sobering fact that the Mayor of Hiroshima, whose white ashes were all that were found of him, was at the time the only Christian mayor in the whole of Japan. There was a lot of discussion among the Agape group whether the American High Command shouldn’t have given a demonstration near Tokyo before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. But then they only had two bombs; And while the navy wanted to talk peace. The Army was intransigent.

We visited one primary school where for half an hour the children put on a stunning concert for us. Then we sat in groups with the children asking questions about what life was like as a prisoner of war. At the end, one middle aged teacher and a newspaper correspondent came up to me and said “ We have learnt a lot of new things today. The children asked all the questions we would never have the face to ask.” Then they explained that there was a wall of silence about the war. Even Japanese School Textbooks mentioned nothing of the war. Japanese who travelled abroad couldn’t understand why there was such animosity against Japan, but little by little the lid is beginning to be taken off. In Hiroshima, we were both greatly gratified to see some changes among the way the Japanese guides related the history from 1931 when hostilities started in China. They also pointed out that Hiroshima was the military headquarters. The Japanese children have always been indoctrinated that Japan was the victim of the war culminating in the atomic bomb.

In Tokyo we had a day off and went over to Urayasu City ,where we had had a share in the founding of a church. It was an emotional reunion meeting so many whom we had been converted and baptised. Now 17 years later the church has been through hard times. It is best summed up in the words of one Christian. Who said, “Our church is homeless! (they rent a room on a Sunday.) We are pastorless, we are also missionaryless; but we are all here and the church is made up of God’s people!”

Japan still remains a non Christian country. We were reminded how pathetically small the churches are,. 126 million and less than one percent are Christians and even less go to church. Evelyn was amazed how, as people spoke to her, the Japanese language all came back. She had a good ministry to a lot of the women. We were reunited with all kinds of people we had known who are giving their support to the Agape movement.. Stephen was able to give his testimony to a number of other Japanese VIPs. As he told how as a prisoner he had learnt to pray for his enemies. He was struck by two or three who questioned whether prayer really worked. I end this article with the challenge to pray not only for those you like but for the people you don’t like, for it does work! God still answers prayer.