Jake became even more popular in November 1956, when a thirty-minute television program titled Return of a Bombardier was broadcast on the ABC television network as part of the DuPont Theater Hour. Professional actors portrayed Jake’s capture by the Japanese, his brutal treatment as their prisoner, his conversion to Christianity, and his going to Japan as a missionary.
It was a strange experience for Jake to watch someone else portray him on television and reenact events that were still vividly burned into his mind. Although he thought some of the scenes were a little overacted, Jake was pleased with the result. Anything that got the message of forgiveness out to the American people was fine with him.
The DeShazer children adjusted to life in the United States, though they were not always happy to be living so far away from what they knew. The younger children complained that American adults treated children more harshly than their Japanese counterparts, and the entire family struggled with leaving their shoes on indoors. However, the children did like many aspects of American life, including hot running water in the house and sports teams to join at school.
Jake’s three years of study at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky passed quickly. Soon after Jake had graduated with his master’s degree in divinity, Flo gave birth to another baby, a daughter, in September 1958. Jake and Florence named her Ruth. They were now the proud parents of five children.
While in the United States, Jake and Flo gave a lot of thought to how they could be best used as missionaries in Japan upon their return. Thirteen years had now passed since the end of World War II. In that time many Japanese people had adjusted their lives to the reality of a new Japan. They no longer felt the stark bewilderment of losing both the war and their veneration of the emperor. Those losses had led to a period of deep spiritual openness in the country. A foreign missionary like Jake could no longer expect to draw and captivate huge crowds at public meetings: it was time for him to move on to another strategy. The strategy Jake and Florence felt could now be the most useful in Japan was starting new churches, pastoring them for a couple of years until they had a solid base of converts, handing off leadership of the church to a local pastor, and then moving on to start another church.
Jake and Flo were delighted when the missions board of the Free Methodist Church not only accepted their strategy as a sound one but also allowed them to start their new endeavor in Nagoya—the city Jake and the crew of the Bat had bombed during the Doolittle Raid.
The DeShazer family spent Christmas with Jake’s mother and stepfather. Hiram Andrus was now a stubborn old man of eighty-eight, and Jake’s mother was still baking the best bread in the neighborhood at age seventy-five. With the prospect of four or five more years in Japan ahead of them, Jake was convinced that he was saying a final good-bye to his stepfather. On December 31, 1958, Jake, Flo, and their five children set sail for Japan from San Francisco aboard the MS California Bear.
Upon their arrival in Nagoya, the family found an American-style house in a section of the city called Smith Town. The area had been set aside to house American military families during the occupation of Japan. But now that the occupation was over, local families had moved into the houses. Florence was very happy with their new lodgings. For the first time since coming to live in Japan, they had running hot water in the house. This made washing Ruth’s diapers much easier.
Once they had settled into their house, Jake and Flo did what they had always done before. They made friends with the neighbors, invited the local children in to hear Flo tell Bible stories illustrated with felt-o-gram figures, and offered English classes. Slowly they began to win converts and to fashion these new believers into a small but growing church.
Everything was going along well, when in September 1959 a typhoon slammed into central Japan. Jake and Flo lay in bed praying as the wind howled around the house. The electricity went off, and eventually, under the deluge of such heavy rain, the bedroom roof sprung a leak. Jake and Flo climbed out of bed and piled their mattress and clothing up against the most sheltered wall. Jake kicked himself for not being more prepared. All they had on hand was a small penlight, which they used to explore the rest of the house. The children were all sound asleep, and Flo decided that it was best to leave them that way.
Jake and Florence made their way into the kitchen just in time to hear a mighty swishing sound. Suddenly they were drenched with rain. The kitchen roof had been ripped off. Fortunately, the rest of the house stayed intact.
At first light Jake ventured outside to survey the damage. Many pine trees lay in the yard, their limbs poking out at odd angles, but none of them had penetrated the house. Many other houses in the street had not fared so well. Foundations protruded from the ground where once whole houses stood. The trunks of fallen trees crisscrossed the roads, and people wandered distractedly through roofless homes. Jake was amazed at some of the women who normally took good care of their appearance. Their hair was tangled, and some of them told Jake that they had spent the entire night screaming. “What did your wife do?” they asked Jake.
“We prayed together and trusted God to protect us,” Jake replied.
“And what about the children? Surely they were very afraid.”
Jake shook his head. “They slept right through the storm,” he told them.
The women were amazed, and several of them became interested in the DeShazers’ Bible study as a result of their calm faith under pressure.
In the aftermath of the typhoon, Jake and Flo had many other opportunities to speak of their faith. They had no running water for weeks, and washing the family’s clothing in a nearby creek gave Flo the chance to get to know many of the neighborhood women better. When the community had difficulty getting electricity restored to their homes, Florence went with a delegation of local women to see what could be done about the situation.
By 1964 the church was functioning well. New members were continuing to join, and Jake and Florence handed the leadership of the church over to a Japanese pastor. With their work in Nagoya done, it was time for the DeShazers to take another furlough back to the United States. By now Paul and John were both teenagers, Mark was eleven, Carol ten, and Ruth five years old. As Jake reflected on the family’s time in Nagoya, he could not believe how quickly it had passed.
Once back in the United States, Jake and Flo made Salem, Oregon, their headquarters. Amazingly, Jake’s mother and stepfather were still living and happy for the opportunity to get to know their five grandchildren better.
During the course of their furlough, Jake and Flo asked for a leave of absence from missionary work. They had originally left the United States with one toddler, but now they were responsible for five children. They both realized that the older children needed to attend American schools for a while so that they would be able to fit back into American culture and attend college or get jobs. They did not know how long this would keep them away from Japan but guessed that it would be between three and five years.
In Salem, Jake preached and taught as much as he could. He also bought a small farm to provide some family income, as the family did not know how long it would be before they returned to Japan. One year went by, and then two. Paul finished high school and enrolled at Seattle Pacific College. Meanwhile, the other children were fitting in at school. Ruth, who had spoken mainly Japanese, was now fluent in English and learning to read. John was a junior in high school. Mark had joined the church choir and the school basketball team, while Carol loved to sew and cook with her grandmother.
Finally, in September 1967, Jake, Flo, and the four younger children boarded an airplane bound for Japan. Once again the family said a “final farewell” to Hiram and Hulda Andrus, who had just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Paul stayed behind in the United States, as he was now in his second year at Seattle Pacific College.
Japan had developed much in the three and a half years the family was gone. A building boom had transformed the landscape, replacing single homes with multistory apartment buildings. Bicycles had given way to motorcars, many of them built in state-of-the-art Japanese factories. Attitudes toward foreigners had also changed. Japanese people no longer stared at the DeShazers as they once did, though Jake’s clear, blue eyes still startled some children.
The Free Methodist Church in Japan was also growing, with new congregations being established around the country. And while the family had been away, Jake’s faithful interpreter, Dr. Kaneo Oda, had died, leaving a large hole in the Free Methodist organization. One of the first things Jake and Florence did upon their return to Japan was to visit Kaneo Oda’s widow and bring condolences from the Free Methodist Church in the United States.
This time, the mission board sent Jake and his family to live in the city of Hitachi, where a church already existed. Jake’s job was to assist the pastor and to open up a new church in the nearby city of Katsuta. Jake met with a Christian family in Katsuta, and from there the nucleus of a church began. Jake went to work talking to the Christian family’s neighbors, giving out literature, and preaching in the family’s home on Sunday mornings. He also started a Bible class in English for boys on Thursday nights. The number of people attending the fledgling church began to grow steadily, and after only two years the Katsuta church had erected a building of its own and was ready for a Japanese pastor. Once again Jake and Flo’s work was done, and it was time for them to move on.
By now John was nineteen years old and struggling to finish high school. He hated studying and could not see much point to it. He was sure that as an American citizen he would be drafted into the military to serve in the Vietnam War. He left school before his final exams and headed back to the United States to enlist in the army. Paul wrote to say that he had finished his degree and had been accepted into the Air Force officer training program. Now Jake had two sons in the military. Though he did not agree with the Vietnam War, he knew that both boys would be called upon to fight in it.
The remaining five members of the DeShazer family then moved to Nishi Tokorozawa, just north of Tokyo. By now Jake had been appointed superintendent of the Eastern Conference of the Free Methodist Church in Japan. As a result, he had more responsibilities than ever.
In Nishi Tokorozawa Jake and Flo set about establishing another church, approaching the task following the same pattern they had used in Nagoya and Katsuta. But this time they were also able to work with two kindergartens and reach out to many young parents.
The new church grew at a steady rate, and at nearly sixty years of age, Jake continued to work hard to assure that everything went smoothly with the church. There was much to do, especially with the misunderstandings about the West that had been caused by the Vietnam War. Many Japanese people began to resent America’s intrusion in Asia and had concluded that the Christian church was a part of a master plan to “win over Asia” to Western ways. Because of this, it was now harder to get people to listen to the gospel.
Mitsuo Fuchida visited Jake and Flo while they were living in Nishi Tokorozawa. He and Jake planned to hold more meetings at which both of them would speak, as they had done in the past. Jake was thrilled to hear that Fuchida was as fervent as ever about his Christian faith. Fuchida’s wife and two children had also become Christians, and now both of his children were studying in the United States.
In 1971 Jake and Florence returned to the United States for another furlough, this time for just a year. They were especially grateful that they would be able to spend time with Jake’s mother, as his stepfather, Hiram Andrus, had just died at the age of one hundred. Jake gave thanks for the godly and steady influence that his stepfather had exerted on his life over the years, and for the way Hiram had supported Jake’s mother and provided a good home for her and four fatherless children.
