He Led The Attack On Pearl Harbor But His Enemy Led Him To Jesus

A Japanese pilot before the full-scale World War II, Mitsuo Fuchida, led the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941. This attack stunned the the Americans and quickly advanced the U.S. into World War II.

According to CBN News, an amazing thing happened years later. Mitsuo Fuchida's life was transformed partly by the testimony of an American named Jacob DeShazer who had been his enemy and a prisoner of war in Japan.

Jacob DeShazer hated the Japanese so much that he even risked his own life for revenge as a member of the famed "Doolittle Raiders," carrying out a daring daylight bombing raid on Tokyo and other cities. DeShazer's plane ran out of fuel over the Japanese territory so he was captured and held as a prisoner for 40 months. He was then beaten, starved and tortured.

While Jacob DeShazer was in prison, he begged for a Bible from his captors. That was when he came to Christ. It was a voluntary acknowledgement that he needed God in times of darkness in his life.

Jacob DeShazer said that, "I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes and that when I looked at the enemy officers and guards who had starved and beaten my companions and me so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity. I realized that these people did not know anything about my Savior."

It was amazing how God transforms a person in times of hopelessness and anger. But what is more astonishing is how He will use a person to lead one or even the worst enemy to Jesus.

Jacob DeShazer was released after the war but then he returned to Japan not as an enemy but a missionary. He came across with Mitsuo Fuchida and that was the time when he led him to Jesus. The amazing story of Mitsuo Fuchida's conversion and the two Americans who led him to Jesus is the subject of a book called Wounded Tiger by T. Martin Bennett.