This is the story of a hero, a villain, and a saint – who were all the same person. His name was Mitsuo Fuchida and although most Americans may not recognize his name, he was a true hero in his native country of Japan – because Fuchida was the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that led to the deaths of some 2,400 Americans.
Of course, his leading role in the attack on Pearl Harbor also made Fuchida a villain of historic proportions in American eyes, so the same individual became both a super-hero and a super-villain in his lifetime – but his story does not end there. Due to a chain of remarkable events, Fuchida would excel in one more way before the end of his life.
T. Martin Bennett, the author of the recently published book Wounded Tiger, the story of Fuchida’s life, tells how two Americans who suffered greatly from Japanese atrocities during World War II changed the Japanese airman forever.
The first American was Jacob DeShazer, a US airman who participated in the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942 and was captured by the Japanese. DeShazer was converted to Christianity after reading a Bible while enduring over three years of mistreatment and torture as a Japanese prisoner of war. As a result, the captive airman forgave and began treating the guards who tormented him with love. Remarkably, they responded by treating him with kindness. After the war, while living in Japan, DeShazer met and became friends with Mitsuo Fuchida who was deeply influenced by the American.
The other American who would influence Fuchida, although he never met her, was Peggy Covell who grew up in Japan in a family of Christian teachers. During the war, her parents were teachers at Christian schools in the Philippines and were killed there by Japanese soldiers in 1943. Covell responded not with hatred, but with forgiveness. Returning to the US, she volunteered at a hospital in Utah that treated Japanese prisoners of war. According to Bennett’s book, the prisoners called her an “angel,” because she was so kind to them. One of the men she treated, Kazuo Kanegasaki, was the engineer responsible for maintaining the aircraft of the Japanese war hero/villain Fuchida. When the war was over, engineer Kanegasaki met his former pilot and deeply moved Fuchida with his story of Peggy Covell’s kindness despite what she had suffered from the Japanese.
The influence of DeShazer’s and Covell’s forgiveness and kindness, along with several events in Fuchida’s life, led to the hero/villain’s conversion and deep acceptance of Christianity. While according to Bennett’s book, the warrior airman could have lived out his life in fame and prosperity in Japan, “Instead, he lived in poverty, telling the world what God had done for him – which was to save him from a life of hatred.” Fuchida also became an evangelist and traveled throughout Japan, the United States, and Europe preaching the word of Christ, forgiveness, and salvation – often in presentations titled “From Pearl Harbor To Calvary.” Fuchida also came to deeply love his old enemy, the United States, and made many American friends. Tellingly, his children became U.S. citizens.
And so, the man who had become both a super-hero and a super-villain for his exploits based in hatred, became through his conversion and service one of those who love God and their fellow beings – one of those the Bible (Romans 1:7 and throughout the epistles, in the ESV and other Bible versions) calls “saints.” Like the apostle Paul, Mitsuo Fuchida came to love those he had hated, and turned from trying to destroy them to serving them – from using his warrior zeal for evil, to using it for good.
