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Appendix IV

From a Travel Dairy

By Frank Engel

The BOAC Argonaut put down on the big US military airstrip on Okinawa. As mere foreign civilians, we are only allowed to walk as far as the cafe. A Japanese waitress brought afternoon tea, and I found myself endeavoring to converse with fellow passengers, an Indonesian couple. They had learnt Japanese during the occupation of Indonesia and offered to speak in that language, but had to resort to broken English to cope with an ignorant Australian. I glimpsed how close we had been to Japanese becoming the lingua franca of Eastern Asia and Australia! They spoke of the sufferings of their country under the Japanese and I sensed how Japan has united us with Asia in suffering. And then "Mrs. Java" said, "But, if it had not been for the Japanese, our country would not have become free."

Later, in Tokyo, I mentioned this to Kiyo Takeda of the Japanese SCM as we talked about the anti-Japanese feeling in East Asia and Australasia. She had been expressing sorrow at the injury and destruction caused by her country. Now she commented, "Somewhere Reinhold Niebuhr talks of good coming riding on an evil horse".

These two impressions of that strange unity which Japan had given us in this part of the world (the unity of common hatred) and of good coming on the back of evil was intensified in Korea. And so I found myself thinking and speaking much of Christian forgiveness – God's forgiveness of us and our responsibility to forgive one another – and seeing this, in a new way, as the great creative factor in the whole area. And yet how little Asia knows of Christ the Reconciler; and how little Australian Christians are committed to the sheer hard work and sacrifice of preaching the good news and carrying on the ministry of reconciliation.

On the other hand, I slowly became aware that God works whether His Church does or not. But the less it works, then the longer it is that Dutch, Japanese, French or British resist His purpose,

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and the more evil is the horse on which good comes riding at last. And, although the horse departs riderless, the germs of new evils in its hoof – marks.

There is a tremendous Christian responsibility and opportunity. Asia today - and there is not a lifetime in which to think about acting. Nowhere is this truer than in Korea and Japan.

Bitterness and Healing

When I spoke with Kiyo Takeda and Makoto Fujita of the legacy of hatred against the Japanese and especially of that left in Korea by 35 years of occupation, she asked me to say to Korean students "Japanese Christian students are very sorry for the past bad relationships between our two countries and hope for a better one in future. We should like to do something to help you at the present time. Would you please tell us in what ways we might help?" She also asked whether I could take a parcel of books from her own congregation to a church in Pusan. So the next morning I flew to Korea with a message and a parcel.