I recently read a book about the World War II battle for Okinawa. Now books about World War II are not uncommon but what was different about this book was that it was written by a Japanese officer who was the senior staff officer of the Japanese army on Okinawa. In the introduction, Frank B. Gibney, who was an American Intelligence Specialist who interrogated many Japanese prisoners of war, gives the reason why the Americans were able to relatively easily obtain military intelligence from these POWs.
“The good treatment given a prisoner was in itself surprising. It was completely different from the death and torture that his superiors promised would await captives of the Americans. He had been deceived. Added to this is a sense of disillusionment in Japan’s military invincibility and awe at American strength, and you had a numbing sense of loss. . .” [1]
For these Japanese POWs, when reality did not match what they believed, they had a profound sense of loss. Any of us would experience the same because if our world view, how we make sense of our world, has been proven to be in error we no longer have something to guide us; we no longer have structure in our lives.
The sense of loss experienced by the Japanese POWs struck a chord with me because I felt the same way about Christianity. I was brought up believing that the Christian world view was the only correct one but when I began to question this world view I found that it was deficient. What was particularly devastating was that few were asking the questions I was asking and even fewer were trying to find a solution. Although I have found some answers to the questions I raised and am no longer disillusioned with Christianity, it is still very disappointing to find so few Christians who are willing to face the contradictions within the current main stream Christian doctrine.
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[1] Colonel Hiromichi Yahara, Introduction and Commentary by Frank B. Gibney. Translated by Roger Pineau and Masatoshi Uehara. The Battle for Okinawa. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995, xxii-xxiii.
