James Cone at a KKK Meeting

Dr. James Cone, a professor at Union Theology Seminary in New York, came to Japan at the invitation of the Korean Church in Japan. The pastor of the Korean Church in Fukuoka City, where my wife and I lived for thirty-six years, was my good friend Glen Davis from Canada. At that time, Glen was also the president of a group of gaijin (foreigners) who met once a month for a study meeting. The name of the group was Kyushu Kenkyu Kai. (Kyushu is the name of the island on which Fukuoka, and Nagasaki, are located; kenkyu is the Japanese word for study, and kai is the word for meeting).

The Kyushu Kenkyu Kai was having its regular monthly meeting during the time Dr. Cone was in the city. Glen invited Dr. Cone to speak to the group, and he graciously consented to do so. When the time came for Glen to introduce Dr. Cone to the group, he said how happy he was to have Dr. Cone to attend our KKK meeting that evening--and then immediately realized that the initials we often used to refer to our study group had another meaning, one that was not so pleasant for Dr. Cone. Glen soon explained what KKK meant in our context, and Dr. Cone good-naturedly began his presentation.

(A few years later, our daughter Karen kept saying that she thought we should change the name of the group--which we finally did. So then for years it was known not as the KKK but the FKK, the Fukuoka Kenkyu Kai.)

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