An Agape Pilgrimage to Japan for Peace and Reconciliation

Steve and Evelyn, now retired, were formerly missionaries in Japan and spent most of their lives serving the Lord in that country. Soon after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and the Pacific War started Steve became a civilian internee in a Japanese internment camp, along with many others including Eric Liddle. Today, civilian internees are known as POW's. This article records a recent visit made with other POW's with reconciliation as it's purpose.

She was born in a little mountain village, where few outsiders ever ventured. Little terraced rice fields and orange groves supported the meagre 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 lost their lives in the mine. There was also one curious grave of sixteen British POW's 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 where they had two little boys. Her husband's Christian life, which at first became a mystery soon led to her conversion. His sudden death in a 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.

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 the miners, a number of them were just fifteen year olds conscripted from Junior High School. An extraordinary thing is that subsequently a number of the one hundred and forty 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 it. 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. He soon dug up a few more of his friends and they arranged to introduce her to the relatives living in the north-east. The POWs and relatives pleaded with her to take them out to Japan and show her the grave.

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 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 the pilgrimage. Some of the ex POW's were converted and true peace and reconciliation was being born. 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 three hundred POW's to Japan. "Agape Ministries" has spread to Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia.

Soon after retirement and coming to TRC, Keiko asked us to go weekly to Croydon to teach a Japanese Bible class for Japanese Ladies, who met in her home. This year we went on the Pilgrimage with twenty two 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, floated in the sea for twenty four 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. He is a Christian, and as he told me, he became a Christian through some of his officers in the navy, who had studied English from missionaries and been converted. Another was Frank Starkey, 85 given years, who was on a "POW Hell ship" being taken to Japan. The ship was sunk by the US Air force. He floated in the sea hanging to a raft for forty eight hours and was pulled out of the water by a Filipino fishing boat which passed his way at 2.00am, when he had given up hope. He was handed over to the Japanese and put in a POW camp in Manila.

Then there was Jan Ruff from Australia, who was Dutch and only nineteen years old when she and eight others were taken by the Japanese and put in an army brothel as sex slaves. She was raped night and day. After fifty years of silence she testified in Tokyo at the war crimes tribunal. She never lost her faith and used to pray night and day, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". She gave her testimony at a Sunday church service. 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 is an official silence on all these matters in Japan. After the service Jan and this lady embraced. No one in the church knew about this.

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 process. When we arrived in Hiroshima, Stephen spoke at the cenotaph. The horror and the destruction of the Atomic Bomb are 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 all rebuilt then, but only as 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 was 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 as to whether the American High Command shouldn't have given a demonstration near Tokyo, before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.

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 of the middle aged teachers came up to me and said "The children asked all the questions we would never have the face to ask". He then said that there was a wall of silence about the war and Japanese who travelled abroad couldn't understand why there was such animosity against Japan. Little by little the lid was beginning to be taken off. We were both greatly gratified by the change in relating the history from 1931 when hostilities started in China. The Japanese children have always been indoctrinated that Japan was the victim of the war culminating in the atomic bomb.

Japan still remains a non-Christian country. We were reminded how pathetically small the churches are. A population of one hundred and twenty six 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 met up 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 the British Ambassador and a number of other VIPs. As he stressed praying for our enemies he was struck by two or three who questioned whether it would really work.

I end this article with the challenge to pray for your enemies. It really does work! - Steve and Evelyn Metcalf