In Fond Memory of Luther Copeland

His obituary begins, “Dr. Edwin Luther Copeland, missionary, educator, scholar, beloved husband and father, died on November 19, 2011, in Raleigh, North Carolina.” Today on the tenth anniversary of his passing, I am posting this blog article in fond memory of Dr. Copeland, who was my much-respected colleague, good personal friend, and meritorious mentor. 

Getting to Know Luther Copeland

Even though I don’t remember any details, I probably first heard about Dr. Copeland when I was a graduate student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was a professor of Christian Missions and World Religions at Southeastern Seminary in North Carolina at that time.

It is also quite likely that I read his small “study course” book Christianity and World Religions not long after it was published in 1963. But I first saw Dr. Copeland at the 1965 Baptist World Congress, which met in Miami Beach. I was impressed with his ideas articulated in opposition to those of Dr. Cal Guy, the Missions professor at Southwestern Seminary in Texas.

I first met Dr. Copeland in person early in 1976 when he became Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin, the school system in Japan where I had been teaching since 1968. Because of our missionary “furlough” in 1976-77, it was mainly from the summer of 1977 to the spring of 1980 that I really got to know him—and to become very fond of him.

Early in 1979, he nominated me to be Dean of Religious Activities at Seinan Gakuin University, so we had extensive contact during the academic year that began on April 1. During that busy year, I came to admire him greatly and profited much from his wisdom and mature expression of the Christian faith.

Learning More about Luther Copeland

By the time he and his talented wife Louise left Japan in 1980, I had learned much about Dr. Copeland. I learned much more about him over 20 years later after he published his memoirs.

Early on, I learned that Dr. Copeland was born in 1916 in West Virginia, and I knew that he worked in the logging business with his father before starting to college. In 1944 at the age of 28, he graduated from Furman University. Two years later he graduated from Southern Seminary and then earned his Ph.D. degree at Yale University in 1949.

In 1946, Luther and Louise Tadlock were married, and they became the parents of five children. They were appointed Southern Baptist missionaries to Japan in 1948. In November 1952, he became the fifth chancellor of Seinan Gakuin, the school system that was established in the year of his birth.

The Copelands returned to the U.S. in 1956 when Luther was employed to teach at Southeastern Seminary. But then he was elected as the 12^th Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin in 1975, succeeding his (and my) friend Max Garrott for the second time.**

After completing that term of service, Luther moved out of the Chancellor’s office on March 31, 1980. Sixteen years and one day later, I had the great privilege and challenge of moving into that office.

In 2001, Dr. Copeland self-published a book titled Memoirs of a Geezer: From the Timber Woods and Back. It is 375 pages long and contains 48 “illustrations.” I found it noteworthy that on the last page of that book, published just before his 85^th birthday, Luther wrote,

I am convinced that for most of us, our God is too small. If God has created everything that is, surely God is interested in all the creation. I often pray that God will make my interests as broad as God’s interests.

Holding Fond Memories of Luther Copeland

Though there is so much more I could write here, I will briefly mention just three reasons I was and remain fond of Luther Copeland.

* He was a man with both intellectual curiosity and intellectual honesty.

* He was a man who never “put on airs” but related to everyone as a human being of equal worth.

* He was a committed Christian who embraced the breadth of God’s love over the narrowness often seen in historical Christianity.

Knowing Luther Copeland helped me to strive for those same characteristics.

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** On June 20, 2020, the 110^th anniversary of his birth, I posted a blog article titled “In Fond Memory of Max Garrott.” 

A Combative and Compassionate “Lily”: The Life of Yuri Kochiyama

Rarely am I moved to tears while watching a movie, but recently seeing Come See the Paradise (1990) brought tears to my eyes, especially when the Kawamura family, including their lovely daughter Lily (who was married to an Irish American), was sent to an internment camp.

I couldn’t help but think about that touching movie when reflecting on the life of Yuri Kochiyama, the real-life woman who, like Lily, was born in California to immigrants from Japan—and yuri is the Japanese word for lily. 

The Crux of “Lily’s” Life

Perhaps few of you have heard of Yuri, the remarkable Japanese American “Lily” born 100 years ago, but hers is an interesting story and one worthy of thoughtful consideration.

On May 19, 1921, Seiichi and Tsuyako Nakahara became the parents of twins, a boy and a girl they named Mary Yuriko. They lived in a relatively affluent White neighborhood, and as a youth Mary attended a Christian church and taught Sunday school classes.

But things drastically changed on December 7 when Mary was 20. Her father, just home from the hospital, was arrested by FBI agents. He died the next month. Shortly after that, Pres. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and Mary and her family were sent to an internment camp in Arkansas.

Max Garrott, my friend and esteemed missionary sempai (older colleague) was forced to leave Japan in 1942 and served for a time as a chaplain at the Japanese internment camps in Arkansas. During Passion Week and Easter in 1944, Dr. Garrott preached at the camp where Mary Yuriko was interned.

Perhaps she heard him preach or lead Bible study that week as she continued to be an active Christian even while incarcerated in the Jerome, Arkansas, camp.

While there, she met her future husband, Bill Kochiyama, a nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldier fighting for the United States. The couple married in 1946 and moved to New York City two years later. There she became widely known as Yuri Kochiyama.

Yuri (“Lily”) died seven years ago, on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93.

The Combative “Lily”

After moving to New York and into public housing there, for the rest of her life Yuri Kochiyama was an activist. She became an outspoken and combative critic of the mistreatment not only of Japanese Americans but of other mistreated minorities living in the U.S.

In 1963 she met Malcomb X and became a combative supporter of his work for racial justice and human rights. When he was assassinated in 1965, the picture of the fallen Black leader in Life magazine shows Yuri crouched in the background, cradling his head.

During the 1960s, Yuri also became a contentious critic of the war in Vietnam and then for decades of what she saw as American “imperialism.”

The Compassionate “Lily”

Five days after her death in June 2014, the White House honored Kochiyama on its website:

Today, we honor the legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who dedicated her life to the pursuit of social justice, not only for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, but all communities of color.

That was an appropriate recognition for the combative and compassionate “Lily.”

Five years ago on what would have been her 95^th birthday, a Google Doodle, which was both praised and criticized, said this about Yuri:

Kochiyama left a legacy of advocacy: for peace, U.S. political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, and reparations for Japanese Americans interned during the war. She was known for her tireless intensity and compassion, and remained committed to speaking out, consciousness-raising, and taking action until her death in 2014.

Here is one of “Lily” Kochiyama’s most quoted statements: 

While we may not agree with all the people and causes Yuri Kochiyama supported, can’t we at least appreciate these words of hers?

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** Yuri Kochiyama’s contentious and compassionate life’s work seems to be getting more and more recognition. 

A children’s book titled Rad American Women A – Z was published in 2015, and Yuri was the Y for the 26 women written about in that book.

In 2019 a book was published under the title Can I Get a Witness?: Thirteen Peacemakers, Community-Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice. The third chapter, following essays about Cesar Chavez and Howard Thurman, is titled “Setting the Captives Free: Yuri Kochiyama and Her Lifelong Fight against Unjust Imprisonment.”

In Fond Memory of Max Garrott

Last month I wrote (here) about my father-in-law, who was born 110 years ago in May. This post is about Max Garrott, an esteemed friend and missionary colleague, who was born on June 20, 1910.

Previously, I have made blog posts about two good missionary friends and colleagues at Seinan Gakuin University, Calvin Parker (1926~2010) and Bob Culpepper (1924~2012). This article is about the man I always called Dr. Garrott, a man I respected greatly from the time I first met him until his death less than nine years later. 

Meeting Max

June and I had the privilege of attending the Eleventh Baptist World Congress, which met in Miami Beach, Florida, in June 1965, just a year before we were appointed missionaries to Japan. Dr. Garrott, his wife Dorothy, and his youngest son Jack were there, back from Japan for a missionary furlough, as it was called then.

I was impressed with Dr. Garrott at that first meeting. Then we saw him and Dorothy again in 1967, the year after we arrived in Japan. On our way from Tokyo, where we were in language school, to Fukuoka, where we were planning to move the following year, we spent a night with the Garrotts in their home in Kokura.

Contact with Dr. Garrott was then quite limited until he became the Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin in April 1973, where I had been a university faculty member since September 1968.

Max’s Brief Bio

William Maxfield Garrott was born in northeast Arkansas, the son of a Baptist minister. A precocious child, he graduated from high school at the age of 14 and Hendrix College in 1929 when he was 19. Five years later he had finished his undergraduate and doctoral studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Garrott arrived in Japan as a missionary on 9/9/9. The year was Showa 9 according to the Japanese calendar, the ninth year of Emperor Showa, known in the West as Hirohito. It was 1934 by the Western calendar. Before long he began his work as an educational missionary, mainly teaching New Testament and Greek.

Just before Christmas 1938, Max and Dorothy Carver, who had served as a Southern Baptist missionary to Japan since 1935, were married.

After April 1941, Dr. Garrott was the only SB missionary remaining in Japan, and soon after the Pacific War began he was interned until he was able to leave Japan in June 1942. In October 1947, Max and Dorothy arrived back in Japan with their three children at that time.

Seinan Gakuin, founded in Fukuoka City by Southern Baptist missionaries as a boys’ school in 1916, elected Dr. Garrott as the sixth Chancellor in 1948. Seinan Gakuin University was established the following year, and Dr. Garrott was chosen to be the first president. He held both offices until 1952.

Then after ten years as Chancellor of Seinan Jo Gakuin (1962~72), the girls’ school started in Kokura by Southern Baptist missionaries in 1922, Dr. Garrott was elected in 1973 as the 11^th Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin. He served in that position until his untimely death in June 1974, just a few days after his 64^th birthday.

My Fondness for Max

Since Dr. Garrott was 28 years older than I, and five years older than my father, I thought he was a rather old man in 1973~74 when I was 35. I remember saying that year that when I got to be an old man in my 60s, I hoped I would be like Dr. Garrott.

I admired him in many ways: he was a devout disciple of Jesus Christ; he was a scholar; he had a sharp and inquisitive mind; and he was deeply interested in the physical as well as the spiritual needs of individual people and of society as a whole.

Indeed, I hope that to some degree I did become, and am, the sort of “old man” such as I thought Dr. Garrott was. At any rate, even though it has been 46 years since his death, I remember him with great fondness today on the 110^th anniversary of his birth.