Martin Bennett 23:59

First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. Everybody talks about everybody's wrong, more bombs. Who has a solution? Say, how do we solve this problem? I'm not saying I'm going to tell you, but I think we can be shown how to solve the problem because these guys did it. If we can learn from their example, we'll be better off. ♪

We'll hear an incredible true story on this edition of First Person. It starts with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but the story goes much deeper into the lives of people who are on both sides of the conflict. Welcome to First Person. I'm Wayne Shepherd. Please visit FirstPersonInterview.com to replay any past interview in this long series of programs. That's FirstPersonInterview.com.

Well, this story from World War II focuses on the Japanese pilot who led the Pearl Harbor attack, as well as other people tied up in this account. Before we talk with the author of the just-released book, Wounded Tiger, Martin Bennett, I want you to hear from Jacob DeShazer, a member of the Doolittle Raiders who came to Christ while in a Japanese POW camp. Jacob had been a bombardier in one of the planes sent to Tokyo in response to Pearl Harbor, but without enough fuel to return safely, they crashed and were taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Before his death in 2008, I interviewed Jacob about his story. And after this clip, we'll hear from Martin Bennett, whose new book tells the story in detail. I was in prison for two years before I...

uh... got a bible uh... more what happened or there are eight of us capturing three were executed one fellow star to death and after he died that way the emperor of japan send a letter out to that prison and they uh... took us out in the yard took us out of ourselves and uh... we were out in the yard and then a fellow began to read

uh... that letter from the emperor and their percent he was ashamed away they've been treating us and that uh... they should treat us better and they gave us little bread to eat with our other

food and they also brought a Bible for each one of us to read. I started reading that Bible because I was scared when I had to jump out of that airplane and I didn't know when they were going to execute me there in the prison and I was thinking quite a bit about the person spent his after death in a

Hell, it'd be a terrible thing. The late Jacob DeShazer. Author Martin Bennett's book titled Wounded Tiger tells the story of Japanese pilot Mitsuo Fuchida who led the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

But the story goes on to tell of the spiritual transformation in Fuchida and their intertwining of his life with Jacob as well as some American missionaries. It's a fascinating story of God redeeming their lives. Well, I've always had my radar on for true stories because I just like them. And I bought a used book from a defunct publisher, I think online. I had it for a while. I know quite a bit about World War II. I know quite a bit about redemption stories. I never heard anything about this guy, Mitsuo Fuchida.

And so I had low expectations. So as I started going through this book and I've got lots of true stories, I mean, even now I get tons of them. I thought, golly, this is, this is phenomenal. I mean, this is a phenomenal story. So I took three years to research the thing for, uh,

writing the book. So it entails, Fuchida is about 50% of the story. Then a guy named Jake DeShazer joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, and he volunteers on the Doolittle Raid, which was the first counterattack against the Japanese in April of 1942.

And then he became a prisoner of Japan because they ran out of fuel. He bailed out and he was in awful circumstances. And then there's the Covell family, parents and kids. They're highly educated adults and they were missionaries and they loved the people of Japan. They went to the worst sections of town and they just helped people. But when the Japanese ramped up for war, they thought we're out. They went to the Philippines, sent their kids to the United States. So those are the three plot lines, but how they come together,

and how this guy went from hating America to loving America, and how Jake DeShazer went from, in his own words, being crazy with hatred to loving his enemies, that is an amazing and fascinating thing to watch. And it's also encouraging and inspiring, and it brings hope to people that, hey, no matter what your circumstances, there's actually a solution here. Watch and see what happens there. If it happens with them, it could happen to you. Yeah.

Well, I was interested in reading your book because I'd actually interviewed Jake DeShazer a number of years ago and have told his story, his part of the story on this program in years gone by, although it's been a number of years now. And so I'm really anxious to get into the rest of the story. I only know a little bit about this Japanese pilot, but you filled in a lot of the blanks of the whole story. He was the number one pilot handpicked by Admiral Yamamoto.

And it was a privilege to be selected for this thing, even though we look at it as being kind of weird. But he aspired to be a great person and a part of a great nation and a great military. That was his aspirations. It was selfish ambition, of course. But just watching his story and seeing what happens, I'll tell you an interesting thing. I had a friend who was a former English teacher and a friend of mine said, hey, give the book to her. She'll review it for you and she'll help you critique it. Right. This is years ago. So.

So I asked her if she would take a look at it, and her whole expression was, I don't want to get involved in something like this. It sounds like bombs, planes, and ships. It's a character-driven story, but that's what she was thinking. I said, listen, if you don't like it, you can just bail out. It doesn't matter to me. So she said, well, I'll read it, but I'm not sure I'm going to read very much of it. I said, fine. So, of course, she read the whole thing twice, and then she said, Martin...

That scene of Midway, I was dreading reading the scene of Midway. I just didn't want to watch. I didn't want to read it. She said, but when I read it, I was completely fascinated. And I was, what did she say? I was just gripped by it because you're with Fuchida the whole way through this story. You're experiencing what he experienced in that battle. He was right in the middle of the Battle of Midway. And so she said it was absolutely fantastic. So just for you to know and for readers to know.

It's not just, you're not a third-party observer. It's almost like you're there while these things are happening. Yeah, and it's not just for people who study World War II history either. This is a human story, isn't it? Yeah, it absolutely is a human story. I did a book club in my neighborhood. It was all ladies, ages probably 40 to 70.

About a dozen or so. And after they read the book, they said it was one of the best books they'd ever read. It's a character-driven story. It does take place in the context of war. But the overwhelming majority of people who read this book, love the book, and pass it on to other people are females. Yeah. So let's start with, you've got the three main characters, if you will. The Japanese pilot. Tell me about him and about his attitude of going to war for his country. Yeah.

Well, I remember when I was in high school and even grade school asking teachers about why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? What are they trying to do? Take over the United States? This doesn't make any sense. What are they doing? And even as a researcher at this point, when I started studying on this story, trying to figure out Bushida and what's happening with the Japanese, it was kind of an enigma because most of the books and documentaries and all are just about the Japanese attack. We beat them and we won the war. The end. It's like, well,

were they thinking? So I really had to get my mind into the mindset of the Japanese people. So if you go back to the end of World War I, there was the Treaty of Versailles and then there was the League of Nations, which was a precursor to the United Nations, and Japan was one of those nations. And they had a proposal called the Racial Equality Proposal, that all races are equal. And the

The other members, like several members, said, no, that's not true. All races are not the same. Some are inferior. And President Wilson was the head of the League of Nations. And he said, well, unless it's unanimous, we're not going to accept this, which was very odd. Well, this infuriated the Japanese and it infuriated Fuchida. There was even people in Japan talking about waging war against the United States. This is 1919. I thought, OK, so there's this racial element here.

to the story of Fuchida that I really didn't know anything about. I grew up most of my years, school years in California and Fuchida ended up on a training mission in 1921 or 22 in San Francisco. And he met with, among other people, Japanese nationals and they complained about the discrimination. Newspapers talking about the yellow peril. They couldn't testify in court, in their own defense. All kinds of terrible things were happening. Merchants did trade practices that discriminated

And this just fomented his anger about the arrogant Westerners who treated Asians in general, in Japanese in particular, badly. And then in addition to that,

was that the Japanese simply wanted club membership as a recognized leading nation of the world because they were very backwards in the 1800s. They worked really hard to be industrialized and get up to speed, but the Germans and the French and the Americans and the British considered them a second-tier nation, kind of like they're not Major League Baseball, they're AAA, and you're never going to be Major League. And this was very offensive to them, and their navy was restricted because of this. So all this to say, answering your question,

All these things combined on Fichida that, hey, the world does not respect us. They don't like us. We will show the world who we are and we're going to earn their respect by conquering. And that's what they did. They conquered Korea and China and then part of

beginning of World War II, our part is they wanted to conquer Southeast Asia for all the resources and expand all the way to India. That was their goal. So it's quite ambitious. The Germans wanted to expand to India as well, and they're going to meet in the middle, and somehow they'll be friends. I don't know how that would have ever worked out. So that was what led him.

into this pathway of destruction. Okay. National and international destruction. So to cut a long story short, and believe me, you want to read the details in between here in Martin's book, but long story short, he became this Japanese Navy pilot who,

And he was a lead pilot that attacked Pearl Harbor. Okay, that's the main character, I guess I'll say, of your book. Yes. This Japanese man, Fuchida. Now, there are two other elements here. Jake DeShazer, just briefly tell us about Jake. He was an incredible man. I really enjoyed talking with him years ago. Yeah, Jake was an incredible man. So he couldn't get a job, and he did what many people do, signed up with the Army. Right.

and he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. He trained as a bombardier, and after his training, Pearl Harbor happened, so he was ready for war, and he volunteered to go on this raid called the Doolittle Raid. He said in his own words, I already mentioned, that he said he was crazy with hatred, so he just wanted to kill Japanese, and that was the philosophy. That was what every red-blooded American wanted at that point. They wanted revenge for the attack, but his plane ran out of fuel. He bails out over occupied

and he becomes a prisoner of war. But when in this desolation and despondency of being in solitary confinement, people being tortured, people being shot, his own life in the balance every day, he said, I don't want to be full of hatred anymore.

Mm-hmm.

And let's go full circle on Jake, because he actually then after the war returned to Japan, a commitment he made even in that POW camp. Yeah, that's right. So he...

gradually comes into the light, understands what it means to follow the Lord, and he started loving his enemies practically right there. And then when he got, you know, he eventually was released from prison, obviously, but they were afraid that they were going to be executed because the Japanese said, if we lose the war, we're just going to kill all the prisoners. They had no reason to doubt the

that. So he ends up coming back home and he wants to go to college so he can be a missionary to go back to Japan. And his friends are saying, are you crazy? I mean, they hate Americans. They tortured you. Why would you go back to Japan? And his answer was, because I want to show them there's a better way to live. He founded over 20 churches, most of which are still in operation today. It's an amazing part of the story. And we'll continue to tell it with author Martin Bennett on this edition of First Person. Stay with us.

Hi, I'm Ed Cannon. And as you know, situations around the world are changing quickly. Stay current with FEBC's ministry and get a deeper understanding of people who need to find hope. Hear how you can feel the pulse of God's Spirit moving through the hearts of believers dedicated to reaching the lost. Be sure you join me for the podcast until all have heard. Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world.

Search for Until All Have Heard on your favorite podcast platform or hear it online at febc.org. My guest is Martin Bennett. He's the author of Wounded Tiger, a new book, and we're talking about it here at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack that we acknowledge about this time of the year.

Martin, we talked about Fuchida, the Japanese pilot. We talked about Jake DeShazer, the American bombardier. The family I was not familiar with in the story that you tell is the Covell family. Tell me about them and how they intersect with this whole story.

Well, their story is extraordinarily important and it was very difficult to track this story down. But the daughter of the Covell family ends up being the fulcrum of change in Fuchida's life. Without her, I'm not sure how this story would have panned out. So what happened was the parents were highly educated,

missionaries. They lived in Japan. They loved the Japanese people and then they fled to the Philippines. They sent their children to the United States and they believed they'd be safe in the Philippines because Douglas MacArthur was there. There was a hundred thousand troops. There was the largest air base of I think B-24 bombers or something like lots of planes and men. Well, the Japanese attacked and they overthrew the entire European islands. So this jeopardized the lives of these people

her parents, so they fled up into the mountains and the Japanese were looking for them and they swore they were going to kill every white person on the island when they find them. So I can't tell you what happens on that, of course, but Peggy Covell herself, she saw the chaos happening in the world and she felt the

pain of everything going on. And she thought, what's the most loving thing I can do for what's perceived to be the enemies, the Japanese? And so she volunteered to go to an internment camp in Colorado. And then from there, she volunteered to go to a hospital in Utah that was for prisoners of war and for Americans and prisoners of war. There's Germans there, Americans, and also Japanese. Since she spoke Japanese, she just

waited on these people hand and foot. So I can't give away too much here, but her story ended up going back to Fuchida

And he said, why would anyone love their enemies? That doesn't make any sense. You know, we kill our enemies. You don't love your enemies. So he wanted to know where this love came from. And that's really what drove him forward in his journey. Okay. All right. Well, can you tell me what happened to this Japanese pilot after the war in terms of was he prosecuted in any way? Well, he went to war crimes trials and some of that is in the book.

But he was not prosecuted for any particular war crimes, and he was asked to be a part of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. He was given a—would have been one of the leaders in the Self-Defense Force, but he declined that because he wanted to live his life for God. And so he spent the rest of his life traveling the world, doing meetings, as many as 20 a week, just telling his story and encouraging people that,

God's there for you. All right, well, let's spend the rest of our time talking about the fact this is a redemption story. This is a faith story, isn't it? It is a faith story, and it's really appropriate this time in history because there are people, there have always been wars, people are killing each other, but nobody has answers. And I'm not necessarily giving an answer, I'm showing an answer. You have the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor hating his enemies to the point that it's a joy to kill thousands of Americans,

You have an American named Jake DeShazer who said in his own words, he was, quote, crazy with hatred, end quote, toward the Japanese. How in the world can these two people end up loving each other and loving each other's nation to the point that Fuchida spent most of his time in the United States, DeShazer spent most of his time in Japan? And that is an encouraging and inspiring, challenging story for anybody to hear. Everybody talks about everybody's wrong, no more of this, more bombs.

Who has a solution? Say, how do we solve this problem? I'm not saying I'm going to tell you how to solve the problem, but I think we can be shown how to solve the problem because these guys did it. If we can learn from their example, we'll be better off. So one of the slogans we use in our marketing and all is remember the past, live for the future. Mm-hmm.

So I'm taking it that Fuchida, the pilot, is the wounded tiger here. Yeah, he is the wounded tiger. So he was born in the year of the tiger. And when he led the attack on Pearl Harbor, the code word that was to be sent back to the fleet that they had achieved complete surprise was tiger, tiger, tiger, or tora, tora, tora. That's the words. But in a bigger sense of the metaphor, a tiger is an animal of

that has potential for great power and beauty. If you've seen one in a zoo or a documentary, like, man, this is an amazing, gorgeous creature. One swipe of the paw can crush your skull. They're powerful. But a wounded tiger can never reach its potential. And that's who Puchita was. He could not reach his potential of what he wanted to be in life. He was wounded by his own choices and by the choices of others. And so, in a greater sense, and this is why I use it as a title, Wayne, is

everyone is a wounded tiger. We all have great potential for power and beauty, but our own choices, sins, the things that other people have done to us that have crippled us, I've heard people say that person's wrecked for life. And I think no one should ever say that because that's not what God says. Anyone in Christ is a new creature. And so, what happened with Fuchida, he became a new creature. He became a triumphant, healed, powerful lion. And when that happens, it encourages you to think, wow, I haven't

done the terrible things he's done, but I feel like I am wounded and I cannot reach my potential. What did he do? How did he do it? Help me, God, to be that person so I can be that triumphant tiger in my own life and in my own way. Yeah. We've done a great job here. This is a war story wrapped in a human story, wrapped in a missionary story, all wrapped in a faith story. It's amazing how you pulled this all together. Well, I'll tell you.

Wayne, I've had people who are not spiritual religious at all, zero on a 100-point scale, and they read the book and they said, Martin, I love this story. I had a woman, tears rolling down her cheeks. Martin, this is an amazing story. I felt like I need to be a better person when I read this story. And this woman is not a Christian at all yet. But I just want to say that because it's not a book of, by, and for believers. It's a book of

of hope and inspiration really for anyone and it is quite entertaining compelling even though it is like six hundred pages you know when the tiger is still a very fast rate of had people read it in one sitting multiple stories that i've heard from that yet uh... is such a detailed story how did you go about to researching all this martin

I read a lot. You know, I read thousands and thousands of pages, but I do read a little bit faster if I know what I'm looking for. And every book has a bibliography in the back, and that gives you more books. So I just buy books, books, books, books. And any questions I had, I would just research until I could figure out the answer to that. And then I come across pieces of information. I thought, oh, man, that's just...

That's incredible. I got to put that in the book. So there's lots of things like that. So they say, write the story you want to read. And that's exactly what I did. I wrote a story that's compelling. That's interesting. That's funny at times. That's emotional at times and has a very positive ending. That's unexpected. And you include photos, many photos. I'm sure these are

These are rare photographs, aren't they? Yeah, they are. They are. Some of these have never been printed before. That is in this 2023 edition. So I have a son. I have four sons, five kids. And my middle son, Tyler, said, Dad, you've got to put pictures in this book. And I said, well, that's not so easy, Tyler. These are not easily found. He said, Dad, you've got to do it. You've got to do it. So I thought, well, I'll do it. So I ended up at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland. I was in Florida. I went to Stanford. I went to Japan. I went all over the place.

Hundreds of emails. We finally got some absolutely unbelievable pictures, pictures that I didn't even know existed. One of the things we got that's in this book, which I didn't even know existed, was...

the telegraph that says Torah, Torah, Torah on it. I didn't even know it was around. So, my translator contacted this museum inside a Shinto temple and asked permission. They said, well, is this an anti-Japanese book? So, we sent reviews from Japanese nationals, including the associate producer of The Last Samurai, a woman named Yoko Narahashi. Her grandfather was an advisor to Emperor Hirohito, and she

gives a glowing review it's on the back cover of the book we sent that to them and some others say okay we're going to give you permission they gave us a high resolution deal i think we're the only ones in the world that have this in the book and it's just one of those cool things that makes it a real story yeah well if you've invested much of your life in telling the story here and done it so well martin um and maybe you've touched on this already but just tell me what are you hoping that the reader takes away here

Well, one thing that's really interesting about Pachita is that he was not seeking God at all. He was not seeking God. He had just had questions, and he wanted answers to those questions, and because he was honest...

He found those answers. So, the scripture says that the Lord is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek him. And it doesn't matter. Nothing else really matters. If you earnestly seek the Lord, you're going to find him because he's a rewarder of those who seek him. Jesus said, everyone who seeks, finds. That's a promise that's

Not made by man, but made by God. So no matter what a person's situation is, no matter where you're at on your spiritual journey, understand God has good plans for you and that you have to know him for him to show those to you. There's a happy ending for every person in the world, every person listening to this show. Our guest has been Martin Bennett, the author of Wounded Tiger. You'll find more information about the book at FirstPersonInterview.com.

Amen.

Her witness in Japan has led many to accept Christ as Savior. If you'd like to learn more about FEBC in Japan, please visit febc.org slash japan. That's febc.org slash japan. Now, with thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us next time for First Person.