THE EMMAUS WALK PRESENTS:
"Postcript,"
by Frank Morgan, Evangelist
Note: I was privileged to meet the author, for I attended a meeting of Frank Morgan back in the 1980s. My mother had known him and his wife before that time in their evangelistic meetings. In latter years, his wife took very ill, however, and I recall that my mother wrote to them and then to him after his wife's passing, offering her Christian encouragement. She had a signed copy of a book of his, "My Witness to the God of Miracles," and I found it today among her books and read it through in one sitting. I was intrigued by his wartime experiences starting with Pearl Harbor and then the dramatic and rather grim sections dealing with his prison ministry in Washington State to two convicted killers, both brothers in their early twenties, right up to their hangings, but was most pleasantly surprised to find his Poscript dealing with his encounter with Mitsuo Fuchida, particularly since I had just shown my mother the DVD of Jake DeShazer's story I had received in the mail shortly before. Was this God's planning? It certainly had the divine earmark of His timeliness!--Ed.
Bitterness of Soul and Desire for Revenge Turned Away When Christ Makes Former Enemies Brothers
Shakespeare, in his familiar drama, The Merchant of Venice, makes Shylock, the money lender, glad to relinquish his claim to his "pound of flesh," when the circumstances of the case were altered. so about a year ago my demand for a "pound of flesh"--my desire for vengeance upon the Japanese who had perpetrated the "sneak attack" upon Pearl Harbor, where I had lost so many buddies and friends--were strangely dissipated, when I met Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who had led the attack--now a believer, and therefore a Child of God.
It was at a Youth for Christ meeting, in the city auditorium, in Portland, Ore. This one-time captain of a marauding squadron of bombers, had given his testimony that night, and had related how he had found Christ as his personal Saviour, in Japan about a year previous.
After the service was over I shook hands with him, and reminded him that we had had a dramatic encounter before. He bowed with Oriental politeness, and said that perhaps this was so, but that he did not remember when or where.
But when I told him that it had been at Pearl Harbor, and that I was there, and had lost many a friend in that treacherous attack, and in the holocaust that followed, he bowed his head in remorse at that painful memory, and his face revealed all the conflicting emotions of his chastened soul. Doubtless he was heartily ashamed of his part in that orgy of destruction and frightful loss of American lives.
The scene was reminiscent of one in Jerusalem, when Barnabus took Paul in to introduce him to the Apostles in the Early Church. Here was the man who had wrought such havoc among the Early Christians. What must have been the conflicting emotions filling Peter's heart, when into his horny fisherman's hand was placed the scholarly hand of Saul of Tarsus--Saul the one-time persecutor--now Paul the Apostle--now the rebuilder of the Faith he had once so zealously destroyed.
Thus, strange to say, though I had cherished through all the years since, a lively desire for vengeance upon the pilots of that squadron of marauders, who had perpetrated such a treacherous assault upon that peaceful Sunday morning scene at Pearl Harbor, on December 7th, 1941; yet the resentment seemed to fade away from my soul, as I held the hand of the squadron leader--because, though the magic alchemy of Salvation, he who had once been a savage destroyer, had since become a Christian, AND WAS THEREFORE A BROTHER IN THE LORD.--Frank Morgan
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