The remarkable conversion of the lead Pearl Harbor bomber

This week marks the 81st anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which launched the start of the Pacific War and turned what had hitherto been a European war into a world conflict. The air attack by 353 Japanese warplanes on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor was led by flight Lt Commander Mitsuo Fuchida. His later conversion to Christian evangelism was one of the peculiar outcomes of this seminal event in 20^th Century history. 

In the summer of 1984, I was on a small car ferry taking me from Matsuyama, a city on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s major four islands, to Hiroshima, situated on the main Japanese island of Honshu. It was a journey that had a transformative effect on my future. It was here that my life intersected in a virtual sense with Mitsuo Fuchida.  

It was a calm, warm summer’s evening, the sun was setting over Japan’s magical Inland Sea with its tree-covered myriad of islands.