It has been 80 years since Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the war between Japan and the United States was opened. The encrypted telegram “Tora Tora Tora” (We have succeeded in surprise attack ) sent by commander Mitsuo Fuchida was so famous that it became the title of a Hollywood movie.
“Recollection of the Commander of the Pearl Harbor Attack” is an autobiography of Mr. Fuchida, and can be said to be a valuable historical document as a memoir of the person who led the war in Japan on site. In the Naval Battle of Midway, which was the turning point of Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, he was seriously injured with a broken leg when he escaped from the bombed aircraft carrier Akagi. Immediately after the atomic bomb was dropped, he participated as a member of the navy investigation team in Hiroshima.
After reading the pamphlet “I was a Japanese POW” by Jacob DeShazer, who was taken prisoner by crash landing in a Japanese military-controlled area in China after the first air bombing of Tokyo, DeShazer thought about the Bible. Knowing that he lived a prisoner of war supported by bible and Christianity, Fuchida also became interested in Christianity. He was baptized in 1950 and went on a missionary journey to the United States in 1952.
In the Asahi Shimbun dated December 1, Rev. Satoshi Uchida stated that what Mr. Fuchida realized by surviving the fierce war might have been “love and forgiveness.” Mr. Fuchida explained that the war was brought about by the narrow mind that they do not understand each other, arguing in Japan and the United States that the chain of hatred of war in which humans kill each other must be broken.
“Love and forgiveness” is also the theme of the Islamic religion and can be said to be a universal value common to all religions.
My heart can take on any form:
Ibn Arabi
a meadow for gazelles,
a cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah,
the scrolls of the Qur’ān.
I profess the religion of love;
wherever its caravan turns along the way,
that is the belief,
the faith I keep.
This is a poem written by Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), a Sufi (with a particular emphasis on the inside) born in Murcia, Spain. Arabi argued humans are a mirror of God. He claims that the original form of human beings is “perfect human beings”. A “perfect human” is one who changes his or her mind and accepts God, who constantly appears in various forms. It is a human being who sees God in every being in the universe and has the heart to praise God who appears in various forms. Arabi considered that a person with a tolerant heart who saw the manifestation of God, even pagans and sinners, was a “perfect human being.”
Ibn Arabi’s idea of tolerance may have a historical and social background in Andalus (Islamic Spain), where Islam, Judaism, and Christianity coexisted. He was educated in Seville, Spain, the center of Islamic culture and academia. During his 30-year life in Seville, he traveled to various parts of Spain and North Africa. Arabi deepened his thoughts on Islam by meeting directly with and touching on the idea of Averroes (1126-98), who was a philosopher and legal and medical scholar in Cordoba, and gave commentary on all the works of Aristotle.
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