'A remarkable prevailing of peace over bloodshed' 

What an unlikely WW2 truce on a remote Japanese island can teach us about living out Christianity in a hostile culture. By Jamie Megoran

I kneel with a small group of other British and Japanese people on an idyllic picture-postcard perfect tropical beach. We gather in the scorching summer heat of this remote Japanese Pacific Island to pray for peace. Sweat dripping from my brow into the white sand below, we listen to words read from Isaiah 53 in both English and Japanese in reverent silence.

This unlikely meeting is the honouring of a truce between American and Japanese soldiers that happened exactly 80 years ago to the day on the tiny Okinawan Island of Akajima, in which both US and Japanese soldiers ceased combat and prayed together for peace. As a result, no further fighting occurred on Akajima, a stark contrast to nearby Okinawa, where huge numbers of civilians were killed in the crossfire or coerced by the Japanese military into committing mass group suicides as an alternative to being taken prisoner.

I was invited by Prof. Hiroshi Sakai of Hokusei Gakun University as part of an Anglo-Japanese team making a TV documentary about this virtually forgotten truce of WW2. Along with Okinawan students of a similar age to me, we learned together about what had happened and shared our reflections with the Okinawan television crew.

The students had a passion for remembering and recording what had happened on their homeland; an ethos that seemed entirely foreign to be growing up in England. To me, sharing my faith and discussing what Jesus teaches about forgiveness and suffering with these descendants of those who had suffered so awfully was a delicate yet important task.

US Marine Reservist Colonel George Clark, and Lt. Osborne, both devout Christians, were the primary architects of this truce, and went to great lengths to secure it. In declassified military reports, Osborne is described as jumping into the water and sprinting unarmed into the midst of enemy territory with nothing but a fervour for avoiding what could easily have been a bloodbath, all too common in the desperate battles of the Pacific. Indeed, thanks to his resilience at many setbacks, due to deeply ingrained Japanese reluctance to even talk to the enemy, he achieved it.

Akajima’s story is the remarkable prevailing of peace over bloodshed and is unique in this conflict. Four hundred miles south of mainland Japan, Okinawa was seen by the Americans as a stepping stone to the invasion of mainland Japan. In the face of fierce Japanese resistance, more than 200,000 people died in a three-month battle between March and June 1945, including 120,000 civilians, making it the deadliest battle of the Asia-Pacific war.

So why on earth did Clark pursue such an unorthodox and unlikely truce in a seemingly insignificant area? Indeed, no one would have questioned what would have been a brief and deadly land invasion as overwhelming US forces mopped up resistance following the fall of Okinawa itself.

As Colonel Clark’s son, James, told us in an interview, “[my father] had a garrison of troops that were available to him to overrun the enemy, but he was much more interested in accomplishing a peaceful surrender.”

Many Americans considered his position as strange, and the Japanese were certainly not expecting this bizarre turn of events.  In the end it saved hundreds of lives, but that outcome seemed unlikely given failed initial attempts to initiate the discussions. Clark clearly had a different outlook to many of his colleagues on the sanctity of humanity. Not only did he hold these beliefs but by living them out, set an example to be followed. Looking back, he said later in life “I think we – as a team – did the world some good that night.”

Clark’s going against the grain like this reminded me of Daniel in exile. In the Biblical account we read of Daniel living out his faith against societal expectations. When a targeted law requiring only prayer to the King Darius was passed in Daniel 6, he continued to pray as he always had, with his window open, not letting the laws of this godless society govern his actions. Any number of rational arguments could be made for him closing his window during this law: after all, he was a highly placed government official who could perhaps influence the King to protect God’s people, and as it was only for a month surely God would understand his drawing of the curtain!

Clark and Osborne could have made similar arguments for pursuing a typical course of action on this seemingly insignificant, mile wide island with a few hundred inhabitants. Instead, going out of their way, they put their own lives at significant risk in the hopes of saving the lives of their formal enemy, and in doing so living out the principles of their faith. Similarly, Daniel’s faith was so valuable and so rightly influential over every course of action he took that a compromise, even minor, was unacceptable to him.

How inspiring and challenging! In a world where we are constantly being asked to file down our faith where it may rub against the ‘correct’ culture and round off the edges where it may otherwise scratch against a broken and sinful society, let these men be an example to us to not let ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly, compromise our identity in Christ.

Certainly I, too often, have found myself moulded not by Jesus but by the Christless environments I find myself in. As Isaiah 53 verse 6 says, ‘we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way’, and is that ever as true as it is 2500 years after it was written!

Daniel, Clark and Osborne provide examples of how to live as Christians in a Christless culture, by leaving the curtain open and by sprinting into enemy territory with nothing more than an unshakable reverence for the life Christ commands us to live.
 

Jamie Megoran (17) is a member of Heaton Baptist Church in Newcastle and visited Akajima as member of an Anglo-Japanese youth component of a larger peace delegation
 

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