Don't Let This Happen Again

"On the heels of hostilities with Imperial Japan in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066 which gave the Secretary of War the power to remove any citizens or aliens from designated areas of the country. Roosevelt hoped this order would minimize sabotage, espionage, and fifth-column activity. By some estimates, the order led to 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry being placed in internment camps or in relocation centers until the end of the war in 1945. Most were displaced from the states of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona. While there were also significant numbers of Italian and German citizens and aliens affected, the Japanese community in the western United States (U.S.) bore the brunt of the policy.

As we now know, Executive Order No. 9066 was devastating for many Japanese families. Tragically, Christians did not reach out to the Japanese-American community during this trying time. While history records that members of the Catholic Maryknoll order voiced opposition to the policy, the Protestant and evangelical community was largely silent. There is no doubt that the immediate dislocation of hundreds of Japanese families created tremendous opportunities to live out the gospel in word and deed. Lamentably, for the most part, those opportunities were squandered.

There is a well-known story that General Douglas MacArthur asked for a number of missionaries to go to Japan during the time of its reconstruction.1 With the defeat of their forces, MacArthur saw an opportunity to introduce the gospel. The call went mostly unheeded, as only 95 Protestant missionaries were sent to Japan. Apparently, General MacArthur was not aware of American indifference to the plight of the Japanese. The church had not shown any concern for its Japanese neighbors. Was there any reason to expect that the church would reach out to Japanese people across the Pacific?

Today, the number of Christians among the Japanese-in this country and abroad-remains stubbornly small. Caught in an ethnic culture resistant to Christianity, 97 percent of all Japanese and Japanese-Americans remain unevangelized. The gospel is just too Western for many."

by Rudolph D. Gonzalez, Ph.D.

http://www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.2904173/k.236E/Concerning_the_Muslims_Among_Us.htm