In 1915, Rev. Herbert V. Nicholson (1892-1983) arrived in Japan after committing his life to serve the Japanese people. Born in Rochester, New York, he had received a call to become a missionary through one of Billy Sunday’s evangelistic crusades. Nicholson began his service by assisting Gilbert Bowles, a Quaker missionary who was then Secretary of the Japan Peace Society.[1] Nicholson would also serve as Secretary in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Then in 1920, he married Madeline Waterhouse, a Congregational missionary, and together they served in the rural town of Mito in Ibaraki prefecture.
Among the conservative farmers, it was a slow task to “win folks to Christ.” Nicholson focused on the practical needs of the people and slipped in a spiritual word when he could. But even the non-religious could sense that the minister opened himself to God’s love and radiated it to everyone around him, as naturally as sunlight. A Japanese-language teacher transliterated his name as Ni-ko-ru-son, using ideograms meaning “God’s sunshine came in to stay.”
For the next seventeen years, the energetic Nicholsons held Quaker meetings for adults and children, taught English, and advised students at the local junior college. When the Friends acquired land on the outskirts of Mito in 1926, the Nicholsons raised funds stateside to build a family home and a student dormitory. Later they added a kindergarten and playground, an “old folks’ home” for twenty seniors, a roadside rest house, a lodge for homeless transients, and a goat dairy. When the Friends secured a large lot in Mito, Nicholson borrowed money to construct a building to house a co-op store, a matrimonial bureau, a legal aid service, a Christian sewing school and a nursery school.[2]
As the war loomed closer, the Nicholsons returned to the United States in August 1940 to raise their three children in Pasadena, California. In January 1941, Nicholson became the interim minister at the West Los Angeles Japanese Methodist Church when the residing pastor, Junichi Fujimori, was hampered by a stroke. Nicholson would preach in both Japanese and in English while Madeline took charge of the Sunday school. In that short time, he became well-loved by his congregation and he cherished them in return.
Then on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Nicholson and Fujimori held worship services as usual. Afterward they sat in Nicholson’s car and ate lunch before beginning an afternoon of visits to church members’ homes. As they began driving toward their first stop, they saw a church member running toward them, waving frantically and shouting, “Sensei, sensei (teacher, teacher), Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor!” That evening they gathered the church together to decide what to do.[3]
Nicholson’s ministry transitioned immediately into crisis mode alongside his Nikkei congregants, for he served the Lord by the principle of Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I, send me!” When many were detained by the FBI, Nicholson visited their families.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, so many church members were arrested that Nicholson made almost daily visits to the Immigration Service detention center at Terminal Island. Since he was fluent in Japanese, he was one of the few who could interpret for the detainees and help them prepare for their hearings. He also ran errands for them, helped them take care of business affairs and consoled their worried families. . . . The U.S. Treasury Department froze the bank accounts of many Japanese Americans. . . . Outstanding loans were called in. . . . Many employers summarily fired Japanese Americans from their jobs, and companies refused to do business with them. Later in December, at the request of the War Department, the FBI began unannounced and warrantless searches of Japanese American households to seize guns, cameras, radios, and other “contraband” items, and to look for evidence of connections with Japan.[4]
Nicholson’s efforts, however, were not always supported by fellow Christians. Once, “he urged a committee of the Church Federation to issue a statement of support, but Pearl Harbor had aroused strong feelings, even among the godly. Dr. Martin, the Methodist chair, roared at the Quaker, “Shut up! After what those skunks . . . did . . . we can’t trust any Jap!”[5] Some churches where he spoke even reported his “un-American” statements until Nicholson himself began receiving regular visits from the FBI.
Nicholson stored many of his people’s belongings at the church in West Los Angeles. He recounted, “The chapel there was converted into a warehouse with furniture piled almost to the ceiling. The last service we held was a sad one. No one knew just what was ahead. Madeline and I accompanied our people to the bus to see them off to the Manzanar Relocation Center, not knowing when we would see them again.”[6] As Nicholson continued his ministry throughout wartime, the AFSC paid him a small salary to cover travel expenses up and down the West Coast, from Arizona to Seattle, visiting the families of those arrested. He often enlisted fellow Quakers to join his itinerant ministry.
Gurney and Elizabeth Binford, Floyd Schmoe, and Tom Bodine accompanied Herbert Nicholson on several different trips to the Imperial Valley in southern California, Yuma, Arizona, and all up and down the coast and central valleys of California, Oregon and Washington. They visited the homes of people who had been picked up and in the process tried to gather all the information they could surrounding each arrest. One of the trips that Nicholson and Schmoe made was to Missoula, Montana where a fort was being used as a detention center for the Department of Justice. Over six hundred Japanese from the West Coast had been sent to this place for the purposes of detention and hearings. Herbert Nicholson stayed behind for a few days to act as an interpreter for some of the Japanese and as a character witness for others. . . . In assisting at these hearings Nicholson “saw his actions as an opportunity to influence the policies and practices of the administration.”[7]
Even after the AFSC stopped funding Nicholson’s travel, he often hitched rides to and from the camps or slept on the train to save on hotel bills. One time, he walked four hot miles from the railroad station to reach the isolated detention center in Lordsburg, New Mexico. In these detention centers, Nicholson frequently served as an interpreter or a character witness at legal hearings for those “potentially dangerous men” suspected of disloyalty.[8] Another time, Nicholson hitched a ride with an old Southern Baptist colored fellow to the women’s detention center in Seagoville, Texas. He was greeted warmly by Mrs. Wada, a pastor’s wife and a very dear friend, and Mrs. Onodera who had been very active in the Women’s Society in Los Angeles: “We all sat around, fifty women and me. I told about the men I had seen and their husbands who were in Louisiana. We prayed, and we sang hymns, and we laughed, and we cried, and we had a wonderful time.”[9]
After completing his tour of the detention centers, Nicholson returned to California and assisted Virginia Swanson, a Baptist missionary, in finding accommodations for the Nikkei families evicted from Terminal Island. “Soon mass evictions were in full swing throughout Southern California. Nicholson spent much of his time at the Santa Anita Assembly Center, doing errands and helping the internees tie up loose ends. He even obtained permission to take a young couple out for the day to be married in his Pasadena living room.”[10]
As the Nikkei were transferred to relocation centers, Nicholson became known as the truck-driving missionary: “He does every conceivable type of shopping and errand-running for many of the 35,000 residents of these centers, and hauls everything from pianos to canary birds.”[11] That first Christmas, Nicholson delivered over 10,000 presents, collected by the Friends Assembly and the First Methodist Church in Pasadena, to children in Manzanar, Poston, and Gila River. Each Christmas thereafter, more churches got involved, collecting over 50,000 gifts in both 1943 and 1944. Nicholson “hauled entire truckloads of fruits, candies, and gifts gathered by Los Angeles churches for the children of Manzanar.”[12] Nicholson himself described what it was like to visit the centers:
We were not supposed to eat with the internees but at the staff mess hall. If you wished to spend several days, you had to spend the nights out at Lone Pine. Later they did put in visitor’s quarters in most of the camps. I still don’t know why it happened, perhaps because of the friendship of Mr. Nash (director of Manzanar) or perhaps because I wanted to royally share the life of the internees, but I broke all these rules. I do not remember ever eating in a staff mess hall. I always lined up with the evacuees and ate at the regular mess halls three times a day. At Manzanar I often slept with John Nagayama, from our West Los Angeles church, and his teenage boys at Children’s village. I would tell them bedtime stories and have prayer with them. I often ate with the children and talked to them. I also ate with the old folks often. For some time, when Mr. Merritt (second director of Manzanar) was put out with me, I did not visit Manzanar, but when I did, he wouldn’t let me sleep inside. I would put a cot on my truck and drive out in the desert and sleep with the coyotes and rattlesnakes and drive back in for breakfast![13]
After the war, Nicholson would assist in the socio-economic rebuilding of Okinawa and Japan. He distributed so many goats to families in need through the Church of the Brethren “Heifer Project” that he became affectionately known as “Grandfather Goat.”[14] He would also work with the World Evangelical Crusade (WEC) to build a sanatorium, prison, and leprosy asylum and to found a convalescent home for the elderly in the city of Mito. His compassion and practical care provided many opportunities to address the spiritual wounds of hurting people: “Everywhere, I asked the people, who had suffered so much, to forgive us. At most meetings, when I asked to be forgiven, someone would stand up and say that they too needed to be forgiven. . . . It was a wonderful opportunity to tell of the love of God.”[15]
Herbert and his wife, Madeline, would serve as missionaries to Japan until 1961, then return home to care for the Japanese in America. “In 1962, Nicholson joined the staff of the Japanese Evangelical Missions Society (JEMS) based in Los Angeles and began to engage in evangelism to Japanese Americans.”[16] The title of Nicholson’s biography, Treasure in Earthen Vessels, was drawn from the words of the apostle Paul:
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:5-11).
As Nicholson himself stated, he and Madeline were merely “earthen vessels . . . feebly overflowing with the treasure of DIVINE LOVE.”[17] They were true friends of the Japanese Americans during the evacuation.
[1] Nicholson recalled belonging to a “little group of Quakers . . . in Haddonfield, New Jersey. . . They would meet four times a year—and they continued to give us fifty dollars a month. They had begun that in 1915 when I first went to Japan (Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way,” 111).
[2] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 46-47. See also Nicholson, Treasure in Earthen Vessels and Herbert V. Nicholson and Margaret Wilke, Comfort All Who Mourn: The Life Story of Herbert and Madeline Nicholson (Fresno, CA: Bookmates International, 1982).
[3] Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way,” 116; Nicholson and Wilke, Comfort All Who Mourn, 1.
[4] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 48.
[5] Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way,” 117.
[6] Nicholson and Wilke, Comfort All Who Mourn, 85.
[7] Lord, “Peace Churches,” 20. See Michi Weglyn, and Betty E. Mitson, eds., Valiant Odyssey (Upland, CA: Brunk’s Printing, 1978), 9. Frank Herron Smith, the Methodist superintendent, was also in Missoula when Nicholson and Schmoe arrived. On one occasion, Smith gave a Methodist sermon, then Nicholson offered words of encouragement from the men’s families that he had gone to see (Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way,” 120).
[8] Nicholson stated that Edward J. Ennis, director of the Alien Enemy Control Unit, once told him privately that in 4,500 hearings, not one suspect was found guilty of espionage or sabotage (Ibid., 131).
[9] Ibid., 127. These women were incarcerated at Seagoville for the mere “crime” of being Japanese language teachers.
[10] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 53.
[11] Kirby Page, “Empty the Relocation Centers!” Christian Century (16 June 1943), 716.
[12] Schmoe, “Seattle’s Peace Churches,” 119-120. Nicholson credited liberal churches as more likely to cooperate in aiding the internees and was ashamed that conservative evangelical churches refused to help for fear of “comforting the enemy” (Nicholson and Wilke, Comfort All Who Mourn, 95). Taylor also affirmed, “The more theologically liberal of the denominations were the most tolerant and consequently the most sympathetic to the plight of the Japanese Americans. . . . The churches went along because their members, too, harbored an unconscious racism that permitted them to become dupes of a misguided military policy, and that is the greater misfortune” (Taylor, “Fellow Feelers with the Afflicted,” 128). Traditionally oppressed groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (“Mormons”), African-Americans, and Jews also did not offer any organized aid to the Japanese Americans.
[13] Nicholson, Earthen Vessels, 78.
[14] Herbert Nicholson, Yagi no Ojisan Gyojoki (CLC Kurashi no Hikarishi, 1974), 223-31. I credit Tsukasa Sugimura for this reference.
[15] Nicholson, Earthen Vessels, 62.
[16] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 24.
[17] Nicholson, Earthen Vessels, preface.
