During this busy period Jake did take the time to write down his experiences for the Bible Meditation League. He often spoke at the organization’s meetings, and the leaders asked him to write about his experiences so they could be published in tract form. Jake could not have imagined the impact the few paragraphs he penned would have on his future.
The family visited Jake’s parents as often as they could. Jake’s mother loved to dote on Paul. But as the time grew near for the family to depart for Japan, some of Jake’s brothers and sisters became concerned. They could not see why Jake and Florence had to go all the way to Japan when there was plenty of missionary work to be done at home. Jake’s sister Julia was particularly upset about how he had been mistreated by the Japanese. She could not believe that he was going back to live among them.
Meanwhile, Jake’s brother Glenn had recently bought a large tract of land in Madras, Oregon, and was irrigating the land for the first time. Land in Madras was still cheap, and irrigated lands held the promise of good returns. Glenn urged Jake to buy some land of his own in Madras, but Jake refused to spend a cent on buying land in Oregon. Even though he had some savings left and the land looked like a good investment, he was afraid that owning land would distract him from his missionary calling. Above all, Jake wanted to keep his focus strong.
In June 1948, Jake and Florence DeShazer graduated from Seattle Pacific College, with both receiving a bachelor of arts degree with a major in missions. Although they both still had some course work to finish the requirements of their degrees over the summer, Jake was proud of the fact that he had worked hard and earned a four-year degree in just three years.
At the end of the summer, after completing their course work, Jake and Florence spent time traveling around the United States, telling people about the great need for the gospel that existed in Japan. Then it was time for Jake, Florence, and Paul to leave. The family traveled to San Francisco, where on December 14, 1948, they boarded the USS General Miegs for the trip to Japan.
As the ship made its way down San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge, Jake could not help but think of the time six and a half years before when he had stood on the deck of the USS Hornet and watched as they passed under the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge. Then he had been an angry young bombardier off on a daring mission to make Japan pay for its raid on Pearl Harbor.
After the ship had left San Francisco Bay behind, Jake made his way to his cabin and wrote: “This time I am not going as a bombardier, but I am going as a missionary. Now I have love and good intentions toward Japan. How much better it is to go out to conquer evil with the gospel of peace!”
Chapter 15
Back to Japan
During the war, the USS General Miegs had been a troopship, but it was now being used to carry the first load of 150 Catholic and Protestant missionaries to postwar Japan. Since the vessel was a former troopship, its onboard accommodation was far from luxurious. The men were quartered on the opposite side of the ship from the women and children. Florence and Paul shared a cabin with eighteen other women and children. The days aboard were filled with a mixture of excitement and routine. Flo had to wait in line for her turn to use the washing machine to wash Paul’s diapers and clothes. Each afternoon she and Jake continued their limited Japanese language study with a missionary who was far ahead of them in his ability to speak Japanese. To pass the time, some of the passengers gave lectures on various subjects.
Jake was particularly interested in the lecture on the history of Christianity in Japan. He was surprised to learn that St. Francis Xavier, a Roman Catholic missionary from Portugal, had introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549. Over the next fifty years, St. Francis’s followers claimed to have half a million converts. Over the years, however, conflict developed between the Franciscan monks and local princes. The conflict became increasingly violent and ended in a bloody massacre in 1638. Following the massacre, Christianity was banned from Japan, and for the next two hundred years the country shut itself off from the outside world. No Japanese citizen was allowed to travel abroad, and no foreigners were allowed to enter the country.
In 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan with a fleet of American warships and forced the opening of Japan to the outside world. Five years later the first handful of American missionaries came to Japan. When the edict against Christianity was lifted in 1873, more foreign missionaries began arriving in the country.
These missionaries faced many challenges, but eventually Christianity began to take root in the country and churches began to sprout. The first United Methodist missionary in Japan was Masatsuga Kakihara, a Japanese man who had studied at Greenville College in Illinois. In 1895 he began preaching the gospel in the remote fishing village of Fukuda on Awaji Island. Two years later he was joined by Teikichi Kawabe, another Japanese man who had become a Christian while living in the United States and had then served as a pastor for three years in San Francisco. Teikichi was a dynamic evangelist, and under his leadership United Methodist churches began to spring up around Japan, particularly in the Osaka area. A seminary was established in Osaka to train United Methodist pastors.
The war, though, had been hard on Christians in Japan. Foreign missionaries were forced from the country, and the Japanese government exerted its control over the church, forbidding certain hymns and verses from the Bible to be read or sung in church. Of course, the Allied bombing of Japan had been hard on the church. Jake learned that nine Japanese Free Methodist churches, along with eight Bible school buildings and many parsonages, had been bombed beyond repair.
On the way to Japan, the USS General Miegs docked in Honolulu, Hawaii, for a day. In Honolulu Jake and Flo were met by the parents of a couple of their friends from Seattle Pacific College. The parents whisked Jake off to speak at a Christian meeting in Honolulu. As they drove to the meeting, Jake marveled that he was finally in the islands where the Second World War had begun for the United States. He recalled how angry he had felt when he learned of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and how that anger had motivated a drive to make the Japanese pay for their actions. Now he marveled that he was in Hawaii on his way back to Japan, not to extract revenge but to tell the people the greatest news Jake had ever heard—the gospel.
On Christmas Day they were back at sea again and approaching Japan. Paul was too young to get into the spirit of things, but everyone enjoyed watching the excitement of the older children when they spotted Santa arriving in a lifeboat.
At dawn on December 28, two weeks after setting out from San Francisco, the low, dark profile of an island came into view on the horizon. Jake and Florence stood on deck watching as the main Japanese island of Honshu grew bigger and bigger before them. It wasn’t long before the USS General Miegs was sailing into Tokyo Bay and heading for the port city of Yokohama. As the ship approached the dock, Jake could see nothing appealing about Yokohama’s dreary buildings, with their peeling paint and unlighted windows.
“Jake, we really don’t know how to be missionaries,” Flo said in a hoarse whisper. “What are we going to do now that we’ve docked?”
Jake put his arm around his wife. He had been pondering the same question. The couple stood there in silence for a few minutes, and then it was time for them to gather their belongings for disembarkation. They said good-bye to all the new friends they had made aboard ship and then headed off down the gangway, Jake carrying Paul under one arm. They had nearly reached the bottom of the gangway when the ship’s loudspeaker crackled.
“Is Jacob DeShazer here? Is Jacob DeShazer disembarking?” came a voice over the speaker.
As Jake waved his free arm in the air, a man with a movie camera made his way through the crowd toward him and Flo.
“Please, go back on board. I work for an American news company, and I need some footage of you. Other reporters and photographers are waiting for you in the dining room,” the man said.
Jake and Flo turned around and headed back up the gangway as those going down stood to one side to let them pass.
Back on the ship Jake and Florence made their way to the dining room, where about thirty men, mostly Japanese, were waiting for them with pens, paper, tape recorders, and movie cameras ready. As soon as Jake stepped inside the room, the reporters began firing questions at him.
“Why are you returning to a country where the people held you prisoner and treated you badly?” one Japanese reporter asked in heavily accented English.
“God has called me to tell the Japanese people about Jesus,” Jake replied.
“How did God call you?” another reporter asked through an interpreter.
“I read the Bible while I was in prison, and I discovered that the Bible is God’s Word. Jesus is the Savior of all mankind. If the Japanese people will accept Jesus as their Savior, they will have the Light of Life, and the love of Jesus will control their lives,” Jake responded.
“Why do we need Jesus now?” someone else asked.
Jake smiled. “That’s an easy one to answer,” he said. “I know that the Japanese are very educated people, but I don’t think they know what happened two thousand years ago, so I am going to bring them up to date!”
The impromptu press conference aboard the USS General Miegs upon their arrival in Yokohama was the beginning of a love affair the Japanese press had with Jake and his family. The journalists and cameramen followed the DeShazer family from the ship and to a nearby rooming house that had been arranged as temporary accommodations for the family. Photographers snapped photos as Jake and Flo took off their shoes and entered the house.
Inside the rooming house it was freezing cold. Jake realized that all he had read about postwar Japan was true. There was very little food, heating oil, or wood in the cities. Devastation and desperation were all around them.
Two days after arriving in Yokohama, Jake and Flo experienced their first setback. Up until then, their son Paul had been a robust, strong toddler, but in the cold, barnlike rooming house he had caught a bad cold. He lay in Flo’s arms, his eyes glazed, unwilling to be coaxed into eating or drinking.
Concern soon turned to alarm, and the DeShazers sought out the nearest U.S. Army hospital. The doctor told them that for Paul to survive he would need special nursing care and to be in a warm environment. With great reluctance, Jake and Flo left Paul in the hospital and returned to their rented dwelling.
The Free Methodist Church in Japan had set up a round of speaking engagements for Jake. Despite Paul’s illness, it was decided that Jake should go ahead with the meetings. While Jake was away speaking, Flo would visit Paul each day at the hospital.
Jake’s first speaking engagement was on Sunday, January 2, 1949. He spoke at two United Methodist churches—one in the morning and the other in the afternoon—in nearby Tokyo. When he arrived at the first church in Tokyo, Jake was introduced to the Reverend Dr. Kaneo Oda. Dr. Oda was a native Japanese man who was also a graduate of Seattle Pacific College. He lived in Osaka and was currently the superintendent of the Free Methodist Church in Japan. Dr. Oda explained to Jake that he would be his interpreter at the two services. The crowds at the services were enthusiastic as they listened to Jake speak, and Dr. Oda turned out to be an excellent interpreter.
Still, it was a strange feeling for Jake that day to be standing in front of hundreds of Japanese people and telling them about his experiences while incarcerated for forty months in a Japanese military prison. Jake told the congregation that he was glad they were no longer shooting at him and that he was no longer dropping bombs on them!
