'Forgiveness Frees Us From the Past'

By FRANCES MCALL
In 1937 Japan invaded China, and the area where my husband and I were working as medical missionaries became a battlefield for the Japanese and Chinese Communist armies. Many of our patients at the mission hospital were Chinese wounded. It was quite common to see a plume of smoke where a village, suspected of hiding or helping the Chinese guerrillas, had once been. As Westerners, our presence was a constant irritant to the Japanese and they soon found ways of making it impossible for us to continue to function. Finally we were ordered to get out within two weeks. So, taking only what we could carry on a mule cart, we abandoned our home and hospital and trudged the 40 miles to the nearest railway. It was midwinter 1941 and I was pregnant.

Our baby was four months old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we were no longer undesirable aliens but enemies. The next four years were to be spent in a succession of internment camps. We experienced what it was like to be pushed around, shouted at, punched and threatened. Our clothing was hopelessly inadequate and food was minimal. We got used to eating rice full of rat droppings and ancient cracked wheat provided for some previous Chinese famine and now abounding in weevils. There was no heating in the arctic-like winters and bedbugs helped themselves freely to our blood during the sweltering summers. We could only watch helplessly when our small girl lay ill with a high temperature while the rain dripped on to her bed through the ceiling of the condemned warehouse which was our home.

What we went through as civilian internees was small compared to the experience of many prisoners of war. It is easy to understand why many of them or their families still feel deeply resentful about the ill-treatment, suffering and waste of life. We had the great advantage of having known and admired a Japanese family before the war. We had spent our honeymoon with them in Japan and met many of their friends. The thought of them often gave us hope when we felt critical or frightened. We felt we were all caught up together in the total stupidity of war.

Now Emperor Hirohito's death brings us once again face to face with the past. It presents us with the age-old choice - do we go on clinging to our bitterness and anger or do we decide to relinquish our grip on our right to feel resentful and, leaving the verdict to God, open the door to new and productive relationships with our former enemies? Those of us who have found it possible to do this have found the reward profoundly moving.

In 1957, Prime Minister Kishi travelled to nine countries Japan had occupied or threatened during the war and apologized publicly for the wrongs committed. For a nation with a tradition like Japan's, this must have been extremely difficult and could hardly have happened without the Emperor's knowledge. How often have we British, in spite of our Christian heritage, taken such a step towards those we have hurt?

My husband and I have met a number of Japanese since the war and each one has spontaneously apologized to us for the treatment we received. The most recent was an elderly lady who visited us with her son just before Christmas. It made us feel very humble.

Bitterness and resentment achieve nothing. Forgiveness heals, it changes people and it frees us from the past. We cannot truly live without it. The buck of hate can stop here whenever we choose.

Frances McAll is a doctor married to a psychiatrist. This article is based on a talk given on Britain's Channel 4 TV.