Mrs. Fukuoka of Fukuoka, Fukuoka

Fukuoka is written with two kanji (Chinese characters): fuku that means good fortune and oka that means hill. So literally Fukuoka means the hill of good fortune. (Most Japanese names have one kanji that refers to something in nature; for example, the shima in Hiroshima means island and the saki in Nagasaki means cape.)

Fukuoka is a well-known name in Japan, mainly because it is the name of one of the nation’s 47 prefectures as well as the name of one of the major cities in the country.

For 36 years June and I lived in Fukuoka City, Japan. It is the major city of Fukuoka Prefecture, which has a population of just over 5,000,000 (just about the same as Colorado). According to Fukuoka’s English website, “The Prefecture offers excellent living and education environments, which help residents to live a relaxed life.” (There are 39 colleges and universities in the Prefecture.)

Fukuoka City is the seventh most populous city in Japan with a population now near 1,500,000. Yet in 2012 Monocle, the global affairs magazine, ranked Fukuoka as the 12th of the world’s most livable cities. The modern city was formed in 1889, with the merger of the former cities of Hakata and Fukuoka. (To this day, Hakata Station is the city’s main train station.)

There are also people whose family name is Fukuoka. One such person is Mrs. Kikuko Fukuoka, a friend who arrived at Kansas City International airport last night and who will be spending the weekend with us. It is a special joy for June and me to welcome Mrs. Fukuoka as a house guest. We have known her for many years, and she has a special meaning for our missionary career.

On Easter Sunday in 1980, we started what became the Fukuoka International Church (FIC). At first, the small congregation met in our missionary residence. After moving to rented facilities with more space and easier access, more people began attending. One of those was Mrs. Fukuoka.

Gradually, Mrs. Fukuoka, who had lived for a time in the United States, became more and more interested in, and gained more understanding of, the Christian faith. Subsequently, she made a profession of faith, and I had the privilege of baptizing her on Easter Sunday in 1985. It was a special time for her but also for the congregation. She was the first person to receive baptism after the beginning of FIC.

Mrs. Fukuoka was four years old at the conclusion of World War II, and her family lived in China (as did many Japanese during the war years). Having to go back to a devastated country after the end of the war was extremely difficult for those families. Some Japanese parents thought the best thing for their children was to leave them in China to be raised by Chinese families there.

It was an emotional time for Mrs. Fukuoka back in the 1990s, when a number of Japanese who had been left in China at the end of the war came to visit Japan for the first time (or the first time as adults). She shared with us how she could easily have been one of those people who had been left behind.

During the 20 years we were together in the Fukuoka International Church, Mrs. Fukuoka was a faithful church member. Maybe partly because of her own experiences in the 1940s, she has regularly been a compassionate friend to many people needing comfort and encouragement during difficult times.

June and I are happy this weekend once again to be with our friend, Mrs. Fukuoka of Fukuoka, Fukuoka.

The Bombing of Fukuoka, 6/20/45

June 20, 1945, was a terrible, terrible day for the people who lived in Fukuoka, Japan.

Fukuoka City, with a metropolitan population much larger than Kansas City, is not well-known in the U.S. But twenty-three years after the end of WWII, Fukuoka became June’s and my home, and we enjoyed living in that beautiful city for thirty-six years.

But it was a terrible place to be on June 20, 1945.

While living in Fukuoka we sometimes heard references to the saturation bombing of the city in 1945. In fact, some friends were always frightened by thunder, for it reminded them of that horrendous June 20. (The bombing actually began less than an hour before midnight on June 19, local time.)

But for some strange reason I never did learn much about the details of the bombing of Fukuoka. Until last year, that is.

Akira Yoshimura (b. 1927) is a bestselling novelist in Japan. His book about Japan in 1945, and later, was published in 1978, and it was translated and published as One Man’s Justice in 2003. Last August I read Yoshimura’s book, and was greatly moved by it.

June 20, 1945, was also not a good day for eight captured U.S. airmen, for they were taken to a schoolyard in Fukuoka (very near where our church used to meet) and beheaded.

Takuya, the main character of Yoshimura’s novel, was a fugitive after the end of the war, for he had given direct orders for beheading two of those captured American flyers and was sought by the Allied occupying forces as a war criminal.

An American friend we knew quite well in Fukuoka has posted on the Internet considerable material about the beheading of those American servicemen. Yoshimura’s novel tells the other side of the story.

By June 20, 1945, there had already been over 20,000 bombing raids on Japan, claiming around 400,000 lives. But most of the attacks on Kyushu, the main southwestern island of Japan, had been limited to military targets—until the Fukuoka bombing.

Most of the nearly 1,000 deaths from that bombing were of defenseless civilians. (That, of course, was also true of the hundreds of thousands killed in August 1945 by the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities.)

The painful question is why were the U.S. prisoners who were directly related to the bombings that “burnt to death thousands of defenceless old men, women and children” (p. 66) not considered guilty by most Americans whereas the man who ordered the execution of two such flyers was pursued as a war criminal?

Some would say the U.S. airmen were executed without a trial. In that case, why was there such cheering in this country when Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. SEALS? (Admittedly, the scale of bin Laden’s crimes was greater, still . . . .) And won’t there be the same sort of rejoicing if, or when, Muammar Gaddafi, is killed by the NATO forces bombing Libya daily?

I do not condone people taking “justice” into their own hands. But much more strongly, I oppose the bombing of non-combatants (the elderly and children) even in war.

Thus, this is a day of sad remembrance for me for those who were living in Fukuoka in 1945. But today is also a good time to pray for peace, now and in the future.