Eighty years ago, on December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to awaken America, “the sleeping giant.” Many Nikkei (Japanese Americans) were attending church or just returning from the worship service when they heard the news. Within the days following the attack, the FBI rounded up over one thousand “persons of suspicion” such as Buddhist priests and Japanese-language teachers. The Nikkei, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, faced illegal restrictions such as the freezing of their bank accounts and confiscation of “contraband” like shortwave radios, hunting rifles, and cameras. A curfew forbade them from traveling more than five miles beyond their homes or staying out past 8 p.m. Churches became essential not just for followers of Christ, but for the entire Nikkei community.

Ten weeks later, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, resulting in the forced relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans. Government officials initially claimed it was for reasons of public safety, but later affirmed that this course of action had been rooted in “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”[1]

On the final Sunday before his people’s relocation, Reverend Donald Toriumi selected his text for preaching from Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (v. 35).[2]  As Paul had placed this question before the persecuted church in Rome, so also the Nikkei church would answer: “No one and nothing at all can separate us.” In the midst of the troubled times they faced, Japanese American Christians continued to worship and to lean on the Scriptures for the strength to trust in Christ’s steadfast care and to continue in care for one other.

Nothing Can Separate

In the face of incarceration and danger, the Nikkei Christians affirmed with Paul that nothing could separate them from the love of God: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:37–39).

If we ever doubt this truth ourselves, we too can look back at God’s loving sacrifice of sending his Son to die upon a cross: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (v. 32). The Nikkei believers recognized Christ as the shepherd of their souls, and this sacred trust was passed down through generations of believers both in song and in the treasury of Scripture.

At his final church service, Reverend Toriumi drew upon church history and Scripture as he led his congregation in singing a classic hymn penned by the Reverend John Fawcett.

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.

Before our Father’s throne,
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
Our comforts, and our cares.

We share our mutual woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.[3]

Toriumi told his congregation of how Fawcett was prepared to leave his beloved church in order to support his growing family:

The parting day came. He preached his final and farewell sermon to his beloved people. Just outside the church were several wagons loaded with the family possessions and books. After the benediction, the people still begged him not to go. Rev. Fawcett summoned all his power to keep his decision and got on the wagon. As he looked down into those tear-stained faces, his mind recalled the sorrows, temptations, joys, and the growth of the faith of these people and the present needs of each one of them. He could not leave them. He got down from the wagon and prayed with the people. As he thought of this experience, the words of the hymn which we have just sung, came to his mind.[4]

Sweet Hymns of Joy

Music has served to translate the church’s shared theology across the centuries, and as Toriumi prepared his congregation for departure to the camps this hymn offered them a reminder of the gospel tie that bound them together. Many of them had been baptized in the Japanese Union Church of Los Angeles. Some had been married in that sanctuary; others had mourned at the funerals of loved ones. As his church grieved their losses, however, Toriumi reminded them that they would carry with them what they had practiced in the past:

We have brought our heartaches unto our Heavenly Father as we prayed for comfort, strength and courage. We have joined together in the partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Through sermons and the ministry of music, we came to know the presence of God, and were able to live a little more closely to Jesus’ Way of Life. Here we have found many of our friends and deepened our fellowship. This tie that binds our hearts at the Union Church is a strong one. Even though we may be separated from each other, let us keep this tie of Union Church in our hearts.[5]

No persecution or imprisonment can prevent believers today from praying and singing hymns to the Lord (Acts 16:22–25). No government injustice or religious prejudice can overshadow our joy in Christ. As he preached, Toriumi prayed that the camps would reunite the Nikkei in fellowship with brothers and sisters from all the churches. He encouraged his people to thank the Lord for the examples of Christian love which had sprouted from the fertile soil of suffering. He then called his church to serve one another and to demonstrate compassion to any they encountered in the camps:

There is one way that this Christian tie to God can be broken, and that is from within us. When we refuse to live the way of Christ, when we refuse to acknowledge the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ, we cut ourselves off from God. Since God is our Heavenly Father and we are fellow-members of this Divine Christian family, let us live in the manner of the sons of God.[6]

Christian love ties together the family of God as we give and receive like Jesus, our elder brother (Mark 10:45; 8:34b–35). As we find comfort in Christ’s love, we then comfort others with the same love that we ourselves have received (2 Cor. 1:3–5; 1 John 4:19).

The Care of Souls

During the Japanese American internment, the Nikkei church recognized their suffering as unjust, yet they countered their grief and shame with an unfailing hope in Christ (1 Pet. 2:19–25). They also led many others to follow Jesus as they cared for hurting souls. Their maturity in Christ led them to ask questions like, “Who in our community might be more open to the gospel because of the suffering they have endured?” and “How can we show the compassion of Christ to those experiencing grief and loss?”

They formed interdenominational churches to strengthen one another through worship, fellowship, preaching, and the ministry of God's Word (Heb. 10:24–25; Rom. 15:14; Ps. 133:1), a practice that is rarely seen today, as we too often become more known for what we are against rather than what we share in common. The Nikkei Christians provide a tangible example of how despite our many differences, gospel unity is the tie that binds us together (Eph. 4:1–6).

Their faith-filled response challenges us to consider how we handle life’s unexpected trials. What sermons would we preach or what hymns would we sing if we only had one Sunday left to gather (Col. 3:16)? How might we, even now, counsel the afflicted who are being removed from friends, community, and all sense of normalcy? Church history reveals how our strongest-held values emerge from the furnace of our trials (1 Pet. 1:6–7); how are we offering the light and hope of Christ to those facing their own struggles?

Today, the majority culture church can demonstrate the love of Christ by ministering to people of different ethnicities, languages, and socio-economic backgrounds within our own communities (John 13:34–35). We can show Christ to those often deemed outcasts by society like the homeless, the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned (Jas. 1:27). We can speak up for those who are unable to defend themselves like immigrants and refugees or the abandoned and abused (Prov. 31:8–9).

The God of the psalmists, of the apostle Paul, of John Fawcett, and of the incarcerated Nikkei believers is still our faithful God today (Lam. 3:21–25). May Christ’s unfailing love comfort us and compel us likewise to care for hurting souls in times of trouble (1 John 3:16–18). 

Tom Sugimura serves as a pastor, church plant mentor, and professor of biblical counseling. He writes at tomsugi.com, ministers the gospel at New Life Church, and hosts the Every Peoples Podcast. He and his wife are raising their four kids in Southern California and share their stories in Hope for New Dads: 40 Days in the Book of Proverbs.

[1] Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Citizens, Personal Justice Denied (1982), 18. More stories about this period can be found at The Church Behind Barbed Wire.

[2] “The Tie That Binds,” a sermon cited in Allan A. Hunter and Gurney Binford, eds., The Sunday Before: Sermons by Pacific Coast Pastors of the Japanese Race on the Sunday before Evacuation to Assembly Centers in the Late Spring of 1942 (Los Angeles: Unpublished manuscript, 1945).

[3] John Fawcett, Blest Be the Tie that Binds (1782).

[4] Hunter and Binford, The Sunday Before.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.