Chapter 11 - In the Court of the Prison

“Mrs. Ishi, have you seen the queer-looking building down the road that the Maekawas are putting up? I just can’t make out what it could possibly be. It has no window and a very small, heavy door. It looks just like a prison. Do you think…?”

“Yes, I saw it too,” her friend interrupted, “and I’ll tell you what I think it is–a refrigeration storage space. But my old man says he reckons the Maekawas are starting a pawnshop and are building a storehouse for the goods. I don’t think the Maekawas are the kind of people who would start a business like that, do you?”

So went the gossip around the neighborhood of the Maekawas, and the mystery remained a mystery, for no one had the courage to ask the builder what he was building! The riddle was solved, however, on September 23, 1962, when the building was completed and dedicated to God. It was, of course the studio for the production of the Voice of Joy broadcast.

The neighbors might have been even more amazed had they been able to be present that day and see the praise which ascended to Almighty God, as the workers of the Japan Mission crowded into the limited space of the studio.

Kneeling as if on holy ground, they gratefully dedicated it to the Lord.

It was the fulfillment of a dream to everyone present, the realization of a vision born over two years before when the first program went on the air. Their united prayer was that God would be pleased to make it indirectly the birthplace of many souls, and that He would hallow it with His Presence week by week, as the many preparations were made for the production of the Voice of Joy.

But an empty shell for a studio is not sufficient. In order to broadcast properly from their own studios it would be necessary for them to meet the high technical requirements of the Japanese broadcasting authorities. Prayer continued to go up to the Father for the additional technical equipment so urgently needed.

One Friday Mr. Maekawa, the technician, and the young woman who did the announcing, knelt in the studio desperately asking God to give them a vitally necessary microphone by the following Monday. It would cost at least $120, and there was no money to buy it. Yet they had to have it before delivering the broadcasting tapes to the various studios in time for the next series of programs.

That very day an unexpected visitor arrived at the Mission Headquarters, and had lunch with us. It was missionary David Wilkinson of the Far East Broadcasting Company. Before leaving, he expressed a desire to see their studio. All those present in the studio were on the verge of tears of joy when the missionary asked, “Could you make use of a good microphone? I have one that I would be glid to let you use for the next year, while my own new studio is being completed.”

But there was still one great need, for another vital piece of equipment, a “Mixer,” and one had been installed in faith. The understanding was that it would be tested for a month, and if found satisfactory, would then be paid for. But where was the $725 to come from? They did not know, but praise God, HE knew! An unexpected, generous gift of $500 arrived that month, and this plus some smaller gifts made it possible to cover this need in good time.

In September, 1944, Norio Maekawa had joined the Navy, at seventeen years of age. By this time bombers were flying over Japan every day, as the second world war increased in violence. From the moment Norio joined he worked like a machine, or like a slave obeying orders. If he slacked off for an instant, he was hit with a big stick or had cold water poured over him. No matter what the cost, he must be hardened for the fight.

Every night after the raids had passed, which were usually aimed at ammunition factories, he had to help clear up the dead bodies. It was a gruesome task, piling the burnt bodies of the dead workers in heaps to be carted away, while their families stood by, weeping over the remains of their loved ones.

Norio became physically exhausted through lack of sleep, but there was no such thing as rest, for the raids became increasingly frequent and intense. Within a few months he was sent to a certain town in Yamaguchi Prefecture and made to join a special secret squadron of the navy. But when he saw the weapon they were preparing, he was dumbfounded! It was a torpedo which was to carry a man inside to guide it accurately at the enemy target. Only after the war were the “strictly classified” facts about

these “human torpedoes” published.

Every day Norio went through rigid training with these torpedoes. He was horrified when different ones were ordered to be human shells. He would see them writing their last letters home and then getting drunk on the evening of death, often crying out, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” Eighty of the young men chosen for these suicide missions died in action, usually blown to pieces by the TNT packed into the warhead of their torpedo.

When one of the torpedoes carried a special friend of his down into the depth of the sea, never to come up again, it shocked Norio deeply. He drank heavily to drown his misery, hoping that by the time his turn came, he wouldn’t care. Finally his turn was announced, coming up in three days. And then the atomic bomb fell and Japan capitulated-three days before his turn to die! His salvation, physically as well as spiritually came as a result of the atomic bomb.

He was pathetically thin by this time, his soul utterly corrupt, and he thought nothing of deceiving people, spending much of his time gambling and fighting. “But God took hold of me in the winter of 1948,” he now says, in relating how he came to Christ.

“One day I came across a band of men holding a street meeting. I watched with hatred, for I was sure they were enemy spies. I jeered at them and tried to pick a quarrel, but they were very patient, and smilingly asked me to listen to a message just once. I followed them to their church, inwardly afraid they were going to beat me up. On the contrary, however, for the first time in my life, I heard about the love of God. My heart, hardened through all the suffering and hardships of the war years was a last melted, and I wept for my sins.

“As I trusted God’s promise, I felt my sins cleansed and my heart was filled with peace. I received the assurance of salvation, and was baptized on April 5, 1948. I shall never forget that happy day!”

In 1957 Mr. Maekawa became.ill with tuberculosis and entered Habikino Hospital. It was here that we had met him, and on his release he joined the Japan Mission as one of our workers, assigned to do odd jobs.” These “odd jobs” soon developed into the major responsibility of being the technician responsible for the production of the Voice of Joy broadcasts.

The Maekawas were childless for several years. When their first child arrived, not long after the Voice of Joy broadcasts began, they were so happy they decided to name him after the program – Kisaku, “Joy!”

It was a real trial of-faith when little Kisaku, for whom they had waited so many years, contracted tuberculosis. He was still undergoing treatment at the time the new studio was built.

The health of all the workers is always precarious. Many of them are far from strong and subject to relapse. Others who have never had the disease are continually exposed to it through the visitation in the hospitals. This is a matter for constant prayer for the Lord’s protection.

It was not in easy thing for us to bring David back into such an environment, when we returned in April, 1962. Yet we knew God was able to protect him, and that every child of every worker was as dear to God as our own son. In spite of the health hazzards around him, by the time David was nine months old he was fat and flourishing, though still toothless, and the center of a great amount of attention from the admiring staff.

Letters continued to pour in to the Voice of Joy office from up and down the length and breadth of Japan, and even from as far away as Okinawa. The broadcast was reaching all kinds, of people, even those in prison. One prisoner wrote:

I am now in prison awaiting sentence for my sin. My conscience bothers me clay and night and I often wish I could take my life. The only thing that stops me is the thought of my poor old mother and how it would break her heart.

It it possible that there is salvation for such as me? I heard your broadcast and it was as though a load was lifted from me as I listened. Please send me a Bible, and, if one such as I can be saved, please save me.

From one prison alone 53 letters were received from individual people who wrote asking for spiritual help. One day I decided I ought to visit this prison, and see what was happening there to bring such a response. I discovered that 3,000 were being allowed to listen to the Voice of Joy broadcast!

I asked for permission to bring the 53 men together who had written for help. I was told that it told be a gigantic task, but that it would be attempted just once. A number of guards were appointed to go get these men from their cells, and bring them together. Thirty-eight of them were rounded up into a hall, and I had the opportunity of saying something to them.

Inwardly I was cryinq to the Lord about what to say to these men! I felt that the Lord wanted me to explain, in the most simple way I could, the plan to salvation through Jesus Christ. So I faced them and began, while they listened most intently to the Gospel from human lips for the first time in their lives.

And then I said, as I always do to people who are seeking the Lord, “The very first thing you must do is that you must confess your sins before the living God.”

Right there, in front of the guards as well as each other, every one of these men prayed out loud, for the first time in their lives confessing their sins to the Lord. Every one of then prayed! They would start off with something like, “Good morning, God. How are You?” And then they would finish their prayer, listing their sins and asking forgiveness. These desperate men did not mind what others thought about their prayers, so great was their hunger for God.

As a result of the broadcast, sometimes the Mission evangelists had the opportunity to visit condemned murderers in Sendai Prison, which is five or six hundred miles from Osaka.

Because Japan is a country of Buddhism, the taking of another’s life is an awful thing. Stray dogs and cats abound, for an unwanted dog or cat is never killed. It is just driven off, for the one who takes any life commits a sin against Buddha.

Before someone is executed, the Minister of justice has to put his seal on the papers. He is usually reluctant to do so because of his Buddhist beliefs and puts this matter off until he goes out of office. Then in tidying up his office for the incoming minister he hastily puts his seal on these papers. Thus condemned prisoners often wait years for their execution, and then suddenly one after the other is executed.

If someone has an opportunity to speak to a condemned murderer about his eternal destiny, and is given just five minutes, what should he say? What a terrific responsibility it is to help him prepare to face the eternal God, when the only time allowed with him is five minutes!

I visited one such murderer at Sendai Prison. This man had become a believer, though not through the Japan Mission. I said, “Mr. Yoshida, I’m very glad that I could see you. Since you don’t know when your execution will be, I’d like to send you anything you want. May I send you some literature to read?”

“To tell you the truth,” Mr. Yoshida answered politely, “since I found the Lord I became a reader of One Book. I want to spend all the time I have left studying the Bible.”

“I can send you some good books.”

Mr. Yoshida shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how good they are. I want to prepare for eternity in the best way I know how by spending all my time with God’s Word.”

I was tremendously impressed, and returned home thinking to myself what a wonderful discovery this man had made. What great consolation the Bible would bring him! Then suddenly one day I read in the newspapers a list of names of people who had been executed, and Mr. Yoshida’s name was included in the list.

Since I was not free to go to the prison at this time, Mr. Karasawa went up in my pIace. When he arrived, he discovered that the execution had taken place three days earlier. He learned that Mr. Yoshida had been allowed to send only one telegram, and had sent that to his parents, or he would surely have let me know.

Mr. Karasawa was able to contact the people who saw Mr. Yoshida die and the police told him that they had never been so impressed at an execution before. Often when these people die, they said, they are so terrified they cannot walk. The police have to tie ropes round them and actually drag them up the execution stairs, while they scream, “I don’t want: to die”

But when Mr. Yoshida’s turn came, he first bowed to the guards. Then he bowed to the police and said, “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I want you to know that within a few minutes I’ll be in heaven with Jesus. Please don’t worry about me!” Then he quietly mounted the steps to the executioner’s stage.

But not every needy person responds warmly to the Gospel message. One day I met a man in the hallway of a hospital, and discovered that he had gone to Sunday School as a child. I said, “Mr. Yamamuchi, you are more privileged than perhaps any other patient in this hospital. You ought to believe in Christ sooner, and more earnestly than any one else here, because you have more knowledge of Him.”

Wakaran, wakaran, “I don’t understand,” the man replied, shrugging his shoulders. Each time I met him and reminded him of the Lord he would brush me off saying, Wakaran, “I don’t understand.” He wasn’t interested in attending the meetings. He wasn’t interested in studying the Bible.

Usually when converts leave the hospital the Mission puts them in touch with the church nearest their home. But when it was time for Mr. Yamamuchi to he discharged, I felt that he had shown so little interest that it was really not worthwhile introducing him to any church. He would probably not attend anyway.

I would have forgotten all about Mr. Yamamuchi if I hadn’t had him brought suddenly to mind six months later, while I was in prayer before the Lord. “Maybe You want me to visit him, Lord,” I said. “I don’t know. But as you know, my schedule is already made out for this month. I’ll make a note to visit him next month, and include him in my visiting schedule then.”

The mission evangelists have a regular visiting schedule in the hospitals, but they also have a schedule for visiting those who leave the hospital, to encourage them to go on with the Lord. So I planned to visit Mr. Yamamuchi the following month.

But that night, every time I woke up it was as if I saw Mr. Yamamuchi’s face. So I prayed, “Maybe You want me to visit him sooner, Lord. I promise You that I’ll make time. I’ll visit him this week sometime!”

The next morning when I got up, I prayed earnestly for guidance during my quiet time with the Lord and asked, “Well, Lord, when do You really want me to visit him?” Suddenly it came over he that I was to visit Mr. Yamamuchi immediately.

I left the house at once, without waiting to have breakfast. I caught the very first bus and travelled through the busy city of Osaka in the early morning traffic arrivinq two or three hours later at Mr. Yamamuchi’s home. It was now about 8 o’clock and time for people to have their breakfast.

I walked up and down in front of that house, wondering what I should do. “I don’t know what to tell him, Lord!” I said. “How can I explain to him why I came so early? All I know is that You wanted me to visit him.” But finally after some prayer I walked in the Front door, met Mr. Yamamuchi’s father and said, “May I speak to your son?”

The son was called to the door, and since I wanted to speak to him in very direct terms about spiritual matters, I took him to a little coffee shop just around the corner.

And then, before I could say anything, Mr. Yamamuchi started to pour out his heart to me. When he had left the hospital, he said, he had committed a terrible sin. This sin became a habit that burned in his soul, and he could not get rid of it. He wanted to break away from this awful habit, but by this time he felt he had no strength to do so, for it had gained such a grip on him. He was imprisoned by his own sinful habit.

Mr. Yamamuchi hid his sin from his parents. But he felt that he needed outside help to get deliverance from its bondage. So he thought of the teachings of his parents, want down to the Shintoist shrine and prayed to the spirits of his ancestors. Worshipping them he said, “Oh, spirits, if you are the real gods life my parents taught me, send one of your priests to me in my home as a sign. Then I will know that you are real and can help me in this trouble.” But nothing happened.

In his home there is a Butsudan, a godshelf, so clasping his Buddhist rosary, he knelt down before Buddha with bowed head and said, “Oh Buddha, if you are the true god, then I pray that you will send one of your priests to me in my home.” He lit the little candles, he sacrificed food to Buddha praying, “If you are able to help me in this trouble, then I’ll know that you are real.” But nothing happened.

Then he recalled the book of his boyhood, the Bible he recalled the Jesus of Whom he had heard as a boy in Sunday School. Again he knelt down, folded his hands as they had taught him in Sunday School, and prayed to Jesus. He said, “Oh Jesus, if You are the real God, then I pray that You will send one of Your servants to my home. Then I will know that You are real, and I will give the rest of my life to You!”

That morning I had the privilege of pointing a very needy soul to the foot of the Cross, where the chains of his bondage to sin could he broken, and the prisoner set free.

“I get up in the morning at six o’crock, den I wash my faith and my hand and den I say, good morning Fad a, good morning Mada. Den sit I down and drink a cup of tea before I go to schooru.” In this way the owner of an elecrtical shop greeted me each time I came to visit, grinning as he displayed the English he had memorized in his school days. He was a very handsome man with such an attractive voice that he was sometimes called on by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation to make announcements over the air.

But this was not why I had come to see him. Not long before, this 26 year old young man had developed severe pains in his stomach and had gone to see a doctor. After several

days of tests, the doctor had declared that he had cancer of the stomach and would live

onlv another two years at the most. In the providence of God, I crossed his path soon after, and although he was a complete stranger, the sad story soon came out, includling the sorry tale of the young man’s sinful past.

I was burdened for his salvation, gave him a Bible and visited him often. Many tims I would have to wait for hours to talk to him about the Savior for even a few minutes, because of the steady stream of customers through the shop. When a few free minutes came in which I could plead with him to come to the Savior, there were, often tears in the young man’s eyes. Even though he had been trained from childhood never to show any emotion, it often seemed difficult for him to control his feelings when talking with me. The Christ Who died for sinners in such a sacrificial way touched his heart.

He regularly read the Bible which I had given him, and soon could talk quite intelligently on some of the subjects in God’s Word. He came very near giving his heart to the Lord, and anxiously I awaited the day when he would make that crucial decision.

A special opportunity soon came to press the decision home, when Dr. Bob Pierce of World Vision came to Osaka for a series of meetings which were to make history in that idolatrous city. The beautiful Festival Hall was obtained for a month, arid the Presence of God filled that place night after night. Thousands were touched as the Word was presented with unusual power, until almost everyone in the large city of Osaka was talking about this effort on behalf of the “American God.” Later on the crowds grew so large there was no way to accommodate them all.

Thus it was not too difficult for me to persuade my electrician friend to leave his shop one night and come to hear the Gospel. Dr. Pierce. spoke very forcefully that night on the prodigal son. From the beginning of his message my young friend forgot his tiredness and listened with rapt attention to what seemed to be his own life story! How often he had goneto the hot springs and ruined the innocency of the sweet younq girls he met, soon abandoning them in his search for others. He saw himself as an awful sinner in the sight of God that night. When the time for decisions came there was obviously a severe conflict in his soul. Should he go forward with the hundreds of others, admit that he too was a prodigal son and turn to Christ? Or should he have a last fling before he was slung into eternity by his dread disease?

In desperation he fled from the Hall, but I quickly followed, not letting him out of sight. As he stopped into a taxi, I was right on his heels, and tactfully suggested that we have a meal together to give us time to talk.

The crowded restaurant into which he led me was dark, with blue clouds of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. The young man headed for a table near the window, opening it before taking his seat. I could see that he was uneasy, seeking for words to express his feelings. The young man looked up, and for several minutes his eyes rested on my face.

“I have never been so troubled in all my life,” he said in a hushed voice, his brow furrowed and his lips twitching with emotion.

“Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” I reminded him.

“Yes, but you don’t know how dark and sinful my past has been! I shall have to become much more righteous before Christ will accept me,” he answered despondently.

“Jesus said, ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

From somewhere out of the misty interior of the restaurant the tinkle of crockery could be heard, along with the ceaseless babble of conversation. The waiter came up to take the order, and with his usual disregard for money, the young man ordered enough food for a half dozen people. Then he said, “Yes, but you don’t seem to realize that I have fallen to depths of sin that cannot he described to anyone else, Many of the accusing faces of women I’ve ruined haunt me day and night. I am too sinful to be saved!”

“Come now,” I told him gently, “and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

“Tonight,” he answered soberly, “I really feel I ought to believe, but I think I shall he too weak to keep myself on the straight way.”

“We are not kept by our own efforts,” I encouraged him, “We are ‘kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation!”

“Yes, I can see now that there is perhaps hope for me. But there is so much I shall have to forfeit if I believe in Christ.” There was a sad expression on his face.

“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” It was a direct question, not to be evaded.

With a deep sign my friend replied, “I shall have to think it over. It is an important step to take.”

I was quick to urge, “Now is the day of salvation!”

But the young man was not ready to take this vital step of faith. Although he was so occupied with God that he hardly touched the elaborate dishes he had ordered, yet no matter how much I pleaded with him, he would not yield.

A few days later this young man decided to have his last fling. With $2,800 he had intended to use for a down payment on a house for his family, he bought himself an expensive sports car. From then on the exotic night life became his only ambition, and his electrical business began to be seriously neglected. Often he would go off for a week at a time to some famous hot spring noted for its immorality.

He was still pleased to see me, but would say quite frankly, “I want your friendship, but not your religion.”

I noticed how weary and thin he was becoming. Yet as evening approached his eyes would seem to lighten, and life would come back to his weary limbs. He would get into his powerful sports car and recklessly drive to places where he could forget all about God and eternity. I would watch sadly as his car tore off down the street packed with traffic, wondering if perhaps he was not trying to die in an accident, rather than by slow process of his dread cancer.

He had made his choice, and had chosen the devil rather than God as his master, recklessly racing down the devil’s highway to an eternal hell. He lost interest in God, lost interest in the Bible, and soon became involved in some kind of swindle.

He was sentenced to spend a term in prison and I never heard of him again. What a contrast this tragic young man was to those prisoners, who, condemned to die, yet had given their lives to Christ and had been transformed.
Almost persuaded; harvest is past!

Almost persuaded: doom comes at last!

“Almost” cannot avail; “Almost” is but to fail.

Sad, sad that bitter wail – “Almost!! – but lost!