Sergeant Jacob DeShazer was assigned to kitchen duty on December 7, 1941. While peeling potatoes, he heard the news that Pearl Harbor was under attack by the Japanese Imperial Air Force. Filled with anger and hatred that his fellow servicemen were at that very moment being strafed and bombed in Hawaii, he shouted out, “Japan is going to pay for this!”

This young sergeant was the son of faithful Christian parents. They had lovingly taught him in their family worship the stories of Jesus and His love for men. But once Jacob was older, he had forsaken the faith of his parents. His school teachers had questioned and mocked the Bible stories that he had learned. By the time Jacob enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps, he doubted whether or not there was a God.

In the army, Jacob’s smoldering desire for retribution against the hated Japanese was given an unexpected opportunity. The members of the 17th Bomb Group were told that there was a secret plan to take vengeance upon Japan. While not given any details, they were informed that it would be a dangerous mission that required volunteers who were willing to risk all. Jacob volunteered!

The crews were taken to Florida and then to the southwestern deserts where they were trained in water navigation and low-level bombing runs in their B-25 bombers. Next, they were transferred to the West Coast where 16 B-25s were loaded onto the aircraft carrier USS Hornetunder secret orders to attempt the impossible: a counterattack against the mainland of Japan. The raid would be commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle.

It was a risky, daring mission. B-25s had never taken off from an aircraft carrier before. But high command deemed it important to show the people of Japan and Emperor Hirohito that Japan was not too far away for the United States to give payback for attacking Pearl Harbor! Knowing that it would be impossible to return to their carrier and land, the one-way mission would bomb targets inside Japan, fly over Japan and beyond, in hope of having enough fuel to make it to friendly airfields in China.

Under strict silence, the task force sailed toward Japan. The carrier sighted a Japanese picket boat when they were still 750 miles from Japan. Fearing that the vessel might signal their approach, Doolittle decided to take off earlier than planned—fully knowing that if they launched early, they would probably not have enough fuel to reach China! Jacob DeShazer was the bombardier on the last plane to take off from the USS Hornet. Amazingly, all sixteen bombers slowly lumbered into the skies, timing their takeoff to get a final shove upward by the upward pitch of the bow of the ship!

DeShazar’s plane was assigned to bomb an aircraft factory in the city of Nagoya. Flying toward his target, Jacob remembered seeing a Japanese fisherman in a boat waving at the plane, never dreaming that it might be an American bomber. Jacob recalled distinctly aiming the .30-caliber machine gun at the civilian and trying to kill him as they passed overhead. Although he failed to kill the civilian, he fully intended to at the time. In fact, Jacob did not care if every person in Nagoya was killed. The bombing run was a success, and Jacob released the devastating bombs carried by his crew’s B-25, chillingly named the “Bat Out of Hell.”

As feared, the B-25 ran out of fuel before reaching a friendly airfield. In the black darkness, the crew bailed out. Jacob remembered hanging in his parachute, wondering if and where he would land. He landed in a cemetery on a freshly dug grave! Later, in his personal testimony he shared, “I threw my arms around that mound of dirt and gave it a good hug.” An ocean away, Mrs. DeShazer awoke in the middle of the night, seized with a sudden urge to pray for her son. “Oh God, save him!” she prayed. Then she went back to sleep, but not before marking the time of the unusual awakening. Little did she know that at that very moment, her son was parachuting into the darkness above enemy territory.

But the relief of landing alive turned to dismay when Jacob realized that he had landed near a party of Japanese troops. The Japanese deceived the American crew into thinking they were friendly Chinese, but then they disarmed and captured them. Eight of the Doolittle raiders, including Jacob DeShazer, were captured by the Japanese that night. Three of the eight bombardiers were executed, and the other five entered a long and cruel captivity. The Japanese were astonished and infuriated that the Americans had come out of nowhere to bomb Tokyo, along with other key cities, such as Nagoya. The Japanese guards tortured their prisoners in an attempt to learn where the men had come from.

One of the other five died in captivity. Jacob recalled long hours sitting on a two-by-four and staring at a concrete wall. He was beaten often and almost starved to death. Every day, his hatred against the Japanese grew greater until it became an all-consuming bitterness. In his personal testimony, Jacob remarked, “My hatred for the Japanese people nearly drove me crazy.”

Of the forty months that he spent in captivity, thirty-four months were in solitary confinement. In those miserable hours of solitude, he remembered the Scripture verses that his parents had taught him. Amazingly, at the very hour of his need, the Japanese guards brought the American prisoners some reading material. He begged them to find him a Bible. One day in May 1944, somehow a Japanese guard brought him a Bible! Jacob read it eagerly from cover to cover.

Soon, he contrasted the hatred of his own heart with the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus loved His enemies and prayed for those that tortured and killed Him. What a miserable and bitter fool Jacob realized that he had been to reject the love of God! On June 8, 1944, in the solitude of his cell, Jacob DeShazer called upon the Lord for salvation.

In the coming weeks, the repentant American marveled to see the Holy Spirit remove the hatred in his heart for his enemy guards and replace it with love. Jacob even learned to love a particularly cruel guard who had beaten him and smashed his bare foot in a door jamb! He prayed for the conversion of the Japanese people and later testified, “I found my bitter hatred changed to loving pity!” He continued, “With His love controlling my heart, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians took on a living meaning.” Jacob spoke of how he had found the “more excellent way” of living by charity as described by the Apostle Paul.

In August 1945, American paratroopers on mission found and set free Jacob DeShazer and the other prisoners. The liberated men were given ice cream; Jacob put on 20 pounds in the first twenty days of freedom! He had promised the Lord that if he was ever set free, he would return to Japan as a missionary. After attending Seattle Christian College and then Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, Jacob DeShazer kept his promise.

He returned to Japan with his young wife, Florence, and their firstborn son, Paul, in 1948. The wounds of war were still fresh. Thousands of Japanese came to faith in Christ during the first year of his preaching. Jacob wrote a tract in Japanese called “I was a prisoner of Japan” in which he shared his own testimony of salvation and his transformation from hatred to love. One of the most remarkable converts was Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese commander who had led the bombing raid on Pearl Harbor! DeShazer and Fuchida eventually preached and ministered together side by side, two men once divided by hate and now bound together as brothers in the love of Christ and the advance of His Gospel!

Over the course of his long ministry that spanned thirty years, Jacob DeShazer planted twenty-three churches in Japan. One of those churches was in the city of Nagoya, the very city where he had dropped bombs as a bombardier during the Doolittle Raid!

Jacob died peacefully in his sleep in 2008 at the age of ninety-five. Even in his old age, Jacob DeShazer eagerly told his fascinating story to anyone who would listen, testifying of the power of God’s grace to transform a human heart from darkness to light and from hatred to love.

Sources and Further Reference:
Goldstein, Donald, and Carol Aiku DeShazar Dixon. Return of the Raider: A Doolittle Raider’s Story of War and Forgiveness. Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 2010.