The next day the cell door opened, and Jake was led down the corridor to Bob Meder’s cell. Inside was a coffin on top of the desk, and in the coffin lay Bob’s body. The guards had laid a wreath of flowers on his chest. As he stared down at Bob’s body, Jake wanted to weep, but he fought back the tears, not wanting to give the guards the satisfaction of seeing him cry. Instead, he looked stoically down at his friend. In the twenty months that they had been fellow prisoners, Bob was the one who had excelled at keeping everyone’s spirits up, telling the others not to give up, that one day they would all be free. And now Bob Meder was gone. Jake wondered whether any of the rest of them would live long enough to tell what horrors had happened to them since their capture by the Japanese.
Back in his cell, Jake found his thoughts turning to an incident with Bob just a few weeks before. The guards had lightened up a little and allowed the Doolittle Raiders to weed the courtyard. Jake and Bob had ended up working side by side. Looking back on their conversation, Jake realized that Bob probably knew that he was going to die. Bob had wanted to talk about God and why the war was dragging on. “You know,” he said to Jake, “I do believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Coming King, and that He is God’s Son. God expects the nations and people everywhere to recognize Him as Lord and Savior, and the war is not going to stop until Jesus Christ causes it to stop.”
The words had seemed to Jake to be out of place. Bob had a brilliant mind yet rarely talked about his faith. As they weeded together that day, however, Bob was telling Jake that he believed God had it all under control.
Pondering Bob’s words took Jake back to his childhood, where he had heard his stepfather and mother say similar things a million times. Deep down Jake wished he also could believe those words. Yet Jake could not bring himself to believe. He had too many unanswered questions about faith and God.
Bob’s body was removed from the prison the following day. Several days later his ashes were returned to the cell in which he had died and were placed in a small box on the desk. As the ashes were returned to the cell, Jake pondered how anyone, even Jesus, could dare to suggest that a person should love his enemies when his enemies were starving good men to death.
Jake spent many silent hours contemplating what makes people of different races or nationalities hate each other enough to wage war. Perhaps, he conceded, the Bible did have an answer to this question, and to all his other questions, but since he had no Bible to consult, how would he ever know?
After Bob’s death, Jake noticed a slight improvement in the conditions at the prison. Perhaps the guards didn’t want everyone under their supervision to die after all. Two and a half cups of rice as well as the bowl of watery soup were now served to each man three times a day, along with a slice of bread at each meal. Sometimes this was accompanied by a cup of hot tea. What a luxury it was for Jake on those occasions to breathe in the aroma of the tea and feel the hot liquid flowing down his throat and into his stomach. Sometimes there would also be chunks of some kind of meat in the watery soup they were served. Jake did not care what kind of meat it was. Whatever it was, it had protein in it, and his body needed protein if he was going to live long enough to tell the world how the Japanese had treated the Doolittle Raiders they had captured.
Besides the improved food rations, another surprise awaited the four remaining airmen—books. Five books were handed out to the men: The Son of God and The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adams, The Unknown God by Alfred Noyes, The Hand of God by William Scott, and the American Standard Version of the Bible.
As each prisoner read a book, he would pass it on to the next prisoner via one of the guards, who would slide it into the cell through the slot in the door. Jake read with gusto the books that were delivered to him. He even memorized a long poem, titled The Pleasures of Hope, from one of the books, and he would recite verses from it to the other three men during exercise time. But what Jake really wanted to get his hands on was the Bible. However, it was agreed that each man could have the Bible for three weeks before he had to pass it on to the next man. Of course, the officers went first, and being the only enlisted man, Jake had to patiently wait nine weeks before it was his turn to read the Bible.
From the moment the Bible was brought to his cell, Jake barely slept or put the book down. Despite the fact that the light in his cell was dingy and the Bible text small, the words seemed to leap off the page at him. Jake started with the Old Testament, reading it straight through, and then the New Testament. And then he reread it, and then he went back and read yet again those passages that piqued his interest.
What amazed Jake as he read was how the Old Testament foretold the New, how the two dovetailed together to tell the story of Jesus. Jake was also deeply touched by the accounts of Christ’s suffering at the hands of the Jews and the Romans. As he spent time reading and rereading the Bible, Jake became aware of a presence in the cell with him. That presence, he concluded, was God right there beside him, reaching out to someone who was lost, alone, and abandoned. The feeling overwhelmed Jake: someone really cared about him. Someone wanted to lift a burden from him, lead him to a new life, and offer a new way of thinking and living.
On June 8, 1944, as Jake continued voraciously reading the Bible, he read Romans 10:9: “Because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Jake had already read the verse several times before as he read through the Bible, but this time the words seemed aimed right at his heart. He knew he had to respond to them. Right there in his cell in Nanking, China, Jake bowed his head and prayed. “Lord,” he began, “though I am far from home and though I am in prison, I ask for Your forgiveness.”
As he prayed, Jake was overcome by a strange sensation. Despite the fact that he was a prisoner of war in solitary confinement in a brutal Japanese prison in China, his heart was filled with joy—joy like he had never felt before in his life. And at that moment he would not have traded places with anyone. He knew he had received God’s forgiveness. He was a new man. The horrors of prison life that surrounded him no longer had any sway in his mind. Nor did death. Death was merely something to be passed through on the way to eternity with Christ. Jake DeShazer was now God’s man. It might not have looked to the Japanese guards that much had changed on the outside. Jake looked to them to be the same bedraggled American airman who had helped bomb their homeland over two years before. But on the inside, everything had changed. Everything was new and alive to Jake.
During the remainder of his three weeks with the Bible, Jake managed to memorize many long passages of Scripture, which he would recite aloud to himself.
It also wasn’t long before Jake had an opportunity to demonstrate to himself and the others just how much he had changed on the inside. Jake was being escorted back to his cell after exercise one morning when the guard slapped his back and pushed him, yelling, “Hayaku! Hayaku!” (Hurry up! Hurry up!) When they reached Jake’s cell, the guard pushed Jake roughly inside, slamming the cell door behind him and jamming Jake’s bare foot in the door. Before he could do anything, Jake felt the thud of the guard’s hobnailed boot against his bare heel. Excruciating pain shot up Jake’s leg as the guard kicked his heel yet again. Finally Jake was able to wiggle his foot free and scurried to the far side of the cell while the guard turned the key in the cell door lock and walked away chuckling to himself.
Meanwhile, Jake sat in agony, cradling his throbbing foot in his hands. His first reaction to the guard’s viciousness was anger and resentment and a desire to get revenge. But as he sat through the day and into the night reciting Bible verses aloud to himself that he had memorized and pondering Jesus’ admonition for Christians to love and forgive their enemies, Jake knew that was what he had to do. Instead of seeking revenge for what the guard had done, he needed to forgive the man and reach out to him with love and respect.
The next morning when the guard came on duty and slid open the slot in the cell door to check on the prisoner, Jake said to him, “Ohayo gozaimasu!” (Good morning). Caught by surprise by Jake’s greeting, the guard just stood and looked at Jake strangely. By the look on the guard’s face, Jake decided that the guard must have thought he had gone mad from being cooped up in solitary confinement. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Rather than being mad, Jake felt totally in control of his actions. He genuinely meant what he had said.
The following morning when the guard came on duty, Jake once again greeted him with, “Ohayo gozaimasu!”
Day after day, Jake continued to greet the guard in the same manner, until one day the guard came to the cell door to talk to Jake. In the limited Japanese he had picked up during his time as a prisoner of war, Jake tried to have a conversation with the guard. He asked the guard how many brothers and sisters he had, and he asked him about his wife and children. He learned that the guard’s mother had died when the guard was young, and that the guard prayed to his mother regularly as was the manner of the Japanese.
A rapport began to develop between guard and prisoner, and a few mornings later the guard again showed up at Jake’s cell door. As Jake went over to talk to him, the guard slipped a cooked sweet potato through the slot in the cell door. Jake was both surprised and delighted by the guard’s action. He thanked the man profusely for the sweet potato and then sat down in the corner to devour it. Nothing he had eaten in a long while tasted as good as the boiled sweet potato did at that moment. As he ate, Jake marveled at how following the Bible’s lead to love and forgive his enemies had indeed changed the situation between him and the guard.
Chapter 12
In God’s Hands
Over the next few weeks, the guard brought Jake fried fish and some candy to eat. As he had with the sweet potato, Jake relished them, thanking the guard and God for their provision for him.
As the wretchedly hot summer gave way to fall and then to another harsh winter, Jake continually repeated to himself the memorized Bible passages. It was a joy to him to have something positive to think about and dwell on. But despite Jake’s new rapport with the guard, the guards were still capable of meting out harsh treatment to the prisoners.
The winter of 1944–1945 brought record snowfall to Nanking, and the snow lay on the ground until March. As a result, during their exercise time outside, the four airmen would have to run to stay warm. But to run they needed to take off the slippers they wore when outside and run in their bare feet in the snow. They were not supposed to take off their slippers when outside, but mostly the guards turned a blind eye to the infraction. However, during one such exercise period, a guard became incensed that the prisoners had taken their slippers off. He ended the exercise time early and told the airmen to return to their cells. Normally the men washed off their feet at a spigot before putting their slippers back on. But when George Barr came to wash his feet, the guard refused to let him do so. Instead, the guard tried to push him away. George angrily spun around and elbowed the guard in the stomach.
The surprised guard called for help, and the other three airmen were dispatched to their cells. As they were going, guards came running with a straightjacket. Jake turned back to look and saw about ten guards surrounding George, rough handling him into the straightjacket. Jake cringed at the sight. From the time he had been captured, George had been picked on and taunted by the Japanese. George was a tall, lanky redhead, something most Japanese had never seen before. To them he was an oddity in a culture that emphasized the value of blending in and not standing out. As a result, the Japanese guards seemed to mark out George for much harsher treatment than the rest of the men.
