On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a preemptive strike against “the sleeping giant,” the United States of America. Many Nikkei Christians were attending church that Sunday morning or just returning from the worship service when they heard the news. Monica Sone recalled the jolting experience,
On a peaceful Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Henry, Sumi and I were at choir rehearsal singing ourselves hoarse in preparation for the annual Christmas recital of Handel’s Messiah. Suddenly Chuck Mizuno, a young University of Washington student, burst into the chapel, gasping as if he had sprinted all the way up the stairs. “Listen, everybody!” he shouted. “Japan just bombed Pearl Harbor . . . in Hawaii! It’s war!”[1]
Students and faculty at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley also sought God’s help in the midst of the crisis:
On the night of Pearl Harbor we trickled into Benton Hall one by one, the last man getting in from a far distant parish about 11:00 p.m. We all gathered in the tiny chapel in the corner of Benton Hall and prayed together in the candlelight, with the closing prayers by our Japanese students. I think it was the most moving emotional experience of our lives.[2]
Rev. Taro Goto and his wife immediately responded in prayer:
A few minutes past Sunday noon, December 7, 1941, the pastor of the First Methodist Church in San Francisco phoned me and said excitedly, “It looks like war between the United States and Japan. Listen to your radio.” My wife and I glued our ears to a small radio set. War! We went into the sanctuary, only a few steps from the parsonage. Kneeling at the rail, we prayed, “God, help us to be good Christians and let us serve Thee well throughout this conflict.”[3]
Within hours following the attack, the FBI rounded up over 1,200 Japanese immigrants whom they had already identified as persons of “suspicion”: businessmen, Buddhist priests, Japanese-language teachers, and other community leaders.[4] The Nikkei faced increasing, yet unpredictable, restrictions such as the freezing of their bank accounts, confiscation of “contraband” material like “shortwave radios, hunting rifles, cameras, ceremonial swords, binoculars, and dynamite used for clearing land. [A curfew soon forbade them] from traveling more than five miles beyond their homes or staying out past eight P.M.”[5] Churches became essential not just for followers of Christ, but for the Nikkei community as a whole.
[Churches] adapted schedules to accommodate evening curfews, but services, holiday celebrations, and revivals occurred as planned until each church’s final days. . . . As tensions rose, Japanese pastors broadcasted restrictions and information about the pending eviction in weekly worship bulletins. . . . Sermons called for peaceful Christian behavior and reconciliation with the nation’s prejudices.[6]
[1] Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Boston, MA: Atlantic, Little, Brown, and Company, 1953), 145.
[2] Harlan Hogue, Christian Seed in Western Soil (Berkeley, CA: Pacific School of Religion, 1965), 124.
[3] Letter from Taro Goto (12 November 1971), cited in Lester E. Suzuki, Ministry in the Assembly and Relocation Centers of World War II (Berkeley, CA: Yardbird Publishing Co., 1979), 61. In the weeks leading up to the evacuation, Rev. Goto would preach a series of sermons based on Abraham’s obedience and trust in God (ibid., 171).
[4] Many Issei Christians were included in this roundup. “In the minds of the authorities, being a Christian made little difference since racial identity was the only crime. Many of the older and experienced community leaders who were Issei men were arrested after Pearl Harbor and spent the first part of the war in Department of Justice Detention Camps” (Sumio Koga, “A Faith Journey of Japanese Christian Churches in the U.S.A.” [D.Min. Dissertation, San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1999], 36-37).
[5] Anne M. Blankenship, Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 16-17. Many Nikkei burned items which implied allegiance to their homeland: flags, photographs, kimonos, books with Japanese writing, family scrolls, Buddhist shrines and statues, etc.
[6] Ibid., 34. See Tom Bodine, “Japanese Evacuation Report No. 7” (26 March 1942), Branch Office: Seattle—Reports, SIS-JAR 1942.
