*numbers in (Parenthesis) indicate source in original document. Unfortunately, unavailable in the web version.

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Takeo Fujiwara was born in Hokkaido in 1905 and was baptized on 10 May 1924, just before the mission closed. He lived in America from 1927 until he received his master's degree from BYU in 1934. (He supported himself by explaining Japan through song, dance, dress, and martial arts to paying audiences.)(34) As he spoke fluent English and was an unwavering Church member,(35) he must have seemed to the brethren to be a logical replacement for Nara. On 7 July 1934, President Grant released Nara and set Fujiwara apart as Presiding Elder and a special missionary (an added responsibility Nara had not had). The Church would send him $35.00 a month so that he could afford to travel and communicate with the other Saints. On 27 September 1934, he reached Yokohama after spending a few weeks in Hawaii and having written to Alma O. Taylor about the total lack of missionary work among the Japanese in Hawaii.(36)

For the next nine months Fujiwara did everything humanly possible to restore the faith and activity of the members. He experienced both failure and success--ex-members hiding from him and his vigorous restoration activity campaign as well as a new mission magazine and the first priesthood ordinances in the ten years since the closing. During this time Elder Yoshijiro Watanabe (formerly of the Osaka MIA Presidency, but now moved to Tokyo) and his daughter Tazuko were Elder Fujiwara's constant companions and greatest supporters.

Within just two months Fujiwara had visited all four cities with members in them. On his first visit to his home, Sapporo, a welcome home party had to be cancelled because no one attended. On the other hand, seven members attended the first Osaka meeting at Elder Katsura's house, and Fujiwara learned some valuable information--Nara had never reinstated priesthood functions, and MIA meetings were still being held every month or two. At this and other meetings Fujiwara asked for the raising of the right hand to release Nara and sustain himself (he always did and recorded everything very precisely).(37)

Seven also attended the Kofu meeting in November 1934 (which means there was just the Yoneyama family of five in addition to Fujiwara and Sister Tazuko Watanabe--by now set apart as mission secretary). The Kofu Saints reported that they had been left out of all communecation since the closing of the mission. If we are to understand how the closing affected the lives of the average Saints, then the Yoneyamas of Kofu are our best documented example--not that they are necessarily average, but, as they both stayed true to the Church and yet had several problems about which Fujiwara wrote in detail, we can look into their feelings deeper that into any others.

Renji Yoneyama and his wife, baptized in 1908, were the first married couple to join the Church in Japan. Kofu had once been a thriving branch, but as members gradually lost interest and few new converts were made, the elders were withdrawn about two years before the official closing of the mission. From that time until 1934 the only real contact Kofu had had with the Church was the visit by Nara's nonmember friend, Mr. Kubota, in 1927.(38)

In Fujiwara's first semi-official handwritten approximation of a quarterly report to Alma O. Taylor, he mentioned that at the November meeting he had asked Brother Renji Yoneyama to be branch president, that Yoneyama had at first refused but then later accepted. He further wrote: We understood that Brother R. Yoneyama (father) blamed the conduct of the church for the closing of the mission and seemed to have stood against the church and changed to his old Buddhist religion.

Fujiwara also noted that a month after the first meeting in Kofu, Morizo Yoneyama, a son, had written to Fujiwara telling him that they had cancelled a Christmas party they had planned for their home because "there will be no earnest and faithful saints who do come to a church meeting." Fujiwara, therefore, decided to postpone Yoneyama's appointment.(39)

By the time Fujiwara and Taylor exchanged letters again, however, Fujiwara was seeing a different picture. On 18 January 1935 Morizo had written to Fujiwara stating that Morizo's own wife and his younger brother were both sick. Fujiwara and both the Watanabes (father and daughter) went to Kofu two days later to comfort and pray for the sick. Morizo's sick wife, a Christian but not a Mormon, prayed with them. On 3 March, however, Kenji, the younger brother died.(40)

About this time Taylor wrote with some understanding to Fujiwara: If Ren Yoneyama has definitely joined the Buddhist Church, he should probably be dropped from the rolls of our church, however, we do not recommend any hasty action in these matters. We must remember that the saints were, as you say, left without organization, leadership, church building, church literature, etc. and it is a wonder that any of them kept the faith. We too are proud of their loyalty.(41)

Because Morizo had refused to allow the Christmas party in his home, Taylor also recommended that Fujiwara not ordain him a priest as Fujiwara had requested.

On 28 April 1935, nine attended a meeting where Fujiwara presided over the sacrament in over twelve years in Kofu. Renji Yoneyama was again appointed branch president. As Fujiwara later explained, Yoneyama had not lost faith in the Church, but had become somewhat embittered. He believed he and his whole family had given their utmost devotion to the Church in Kofu, and yet, just as they were getting going, the Church was pulled out of Kofu suddenly, and without any explanation. His whole-hearted devotion was nothing. Brother Yoneyama blames the church for this insincerity, negligence, and impatience in doing the mission activities among the Japanese people.

Although he had been hurt, he had not rebelled against the Church or broken the commandments. He refused his calling at first only because he felt he was not capable and too old and feeble.(42) Due to the lonesomeness of his mind he often goes to the font of the Buddha shelf where ancestors were worshipped and gives prayer. It is the natural habit of the Japanese old people.(43)

Fujiwara stressed that he did this out of habit, not belief, and stated: We must pity, indeed, on the lonesomeness of his heart without the church, its leaders, its meetings--in fact, there was nothing of the church affairs except the members were drifted in the wandering path. He was, I understand, one of the most faithful saints who the Japan Mission had ever had . . . [his is the only family] all of whom (but last girl) joined the church. He is rather frank, honest, and faithful. That is perhaps a reason why he blamed the sudden action of the church in the withdrawal of the missionary activities from Japan, especially from Kofu before the closing of the mission. Since then the saints in Kofu were left alone without any instruction and some of them did not know why it was withdrawn. . . . So we cannot after all blame Brother Ren Yoneyama who is, I am sure, far better than the average saint in Japan. If we will excommunicate him, we must excommunicate most of the members in Japan.(44)

Fujiwara also explained that they had refused to use their house for the Christmas party only because of disease (which later took the lives of Kenji and Morizo's own baby). He also explained that Morizo was the first member to write him upon his return to Japan and at that time he had written:
I joined the church when I was eight years old . . . so I could not understand much of the gospel. . . . I always thought I would do something for the church. Therefore we are very glad to have you here in Japan . . . we shall cooperate and assist you as much as we can. . . . Fujiwara also mentioned that, "Sister Hana Yoneyama (wife of Brother Ren) is still much faithful. She worries much about her husband's changing mind and attitudes." And the oldest daughter, now married as Tsuneko Kitai, often sent Fujiwara cards and greetings.(45)

Although we don't know what happened to the Yoneyamas or their attitude toward the Church, or the Church's attitude toward them during the next fourteen years, Edward L. Clissold, the first mission president after the reopening, felt that the Lord still had a work to perform through them. In trying to reestablish Kofu as a branch in 1949, he had spent the day with a Brother Yajima searching for old members, especially a photographer named Yoneyama. Having failed, President Clissold offered a silent prayer just before they were to return to Tokyo, in a last desperate hope. He was impressed to return to the military translation office he had just come from. When he asked if anyone knew a Mormon named Yoneyama, one man asked if they are the people who use the Book of Mormon. He then said he had seen a Book of Mormon many years ago in the house of a school teacher named Yoneyama. Within minutes they were in contact with Renji and Morizo. The Yoneyama's greatly helped in the reestablishment of the work thereafter.(46)

Fujiwara worked diligently to locate and reactivate the Saints. Using the addresses printed in Shuro he sent out greetings and invitations for meetings and parties. Of thirty-three invited to a 1934 Tokyo Christmas party, only seven attended; but the party was so enjoyable that all "sighed with pleasure."47 By this time Elder Watanabe had been sustained as Tokyo branch president with Sister Reiko Mochizuki as clerk. Twenty-two people attended a Christmas party at Sister Kumagai's in Sapporo, but she was most likely the only member there.

By March 1935, Fujiwara had located six Sapporo members who agreed to help in varying degrees, and he organized a branch there. Nine attended the previously mentioned April sacrament meeting in Kofu. Also in April Osaka held its first testimony and sacrament meeting in over ten years. On 19 May 1935, two children of Sister Reiko Mochizuki (eleven and seventeen years old) were baptized by Elder Fujiwara and confirmed by Elder Watanabe--the first such ordinances since the closing. As Fujiwara later expressed it, "I am very happy to have two new members within a year of my mission in Japan. May the Lord continue his favor and blessings upon me."(48)

Also in May, the first and last issue of Hattatsu (The Progress)--a magazine fashioned after Shuro--was published. It was printed in both Japanese and English, so that friends in Hawaii and America could be made aware of the happenings in Japan. It contained mission history and news as well as letters between the Japanese Saints and friends overseas. One letter from Brother Takagai Tomigoro (who had studied in America) to Senator Thomas and Alma O. Taylor pleaded, "with my ardent desire for PEACE of the whole human kind on the earth I do earnestly point out that NOW is the best and finest chance for restoration of the Japan Mission of the Church."(49) Fujiwara and Takagi and others had a strong nationalistic feeling for Japan,(50) and felt that the reestablishment of the mission was the best way to solve the growing differences between Japan and America. This is especially true since Chojiro Kuriyama, a member, was working for the Japanese government in New York, and former mission president, Senator Elbert Thomas, was in Washington.(51)

The variety of comments and people that Fujiwara ran into testifies of the varieties of religious experience and needs. Some members really wanted and needed the Church to keep them strong. As a Brother Nakagawa commented to Fujiwara, "We are generally less faithful, and could not continue our faithful with some reasons, but we are still Mormons."(52) Others felt close to the gospel, without any apparent need for the Church. The name of Fude Tai (sister to Tsune Nachie of Hawaii) is not on any of the lists of those who attended meetings yet, when Fujiwara located her in February 1935, she was reading the Book of Mormon with her son and his family. Others, like Sister Kumagai, were always holding church-type meetings whether was anyone from the Church there or not.

Some, feeling neglected by the Church, returned to old life styles, and were bothered by Fujiwara's persistence in trying to reactivate them. Such was the case with the Nakazawas and the family of a Brother Kitagawa (Nara's former MIA counselor and coeditor of Shuro), who kept trying to give Fujiwara "the slip." "The family of this brother are very ignorant or funny, as they told us wrong places of this brother's business and they told us just wrong things." And of course others, like the Yoneyamas, felt inwardly hurt, as if God had turned his back on them.(53) Fujiwara summarized the feeling of many former Saints to Taylor:
If we investigate the Saints in Japan, we will find no saints who can be said to be really faithful and real members of the church of Christ. Many of them will say that they are not interested in religion any longer, for religion does not give them anything spiritually and, of course, nothing materially. So they say they are in changing their mind, "Shinkyo no henka" . . . I always send them cards. . . but only five or six Saints have ever answered my greetings.(54)

Alma O. Taylor served in a position something like what is today called a regional or mission representative--a go-between for Fujiwara and the general authorities, translating and advising concerning letters that went both ways. The letters between him and Fujiwara are fascinating. Over and over he tried to get Fujiwara to classify donations from the members, but he just kept saying, "the money is for the Church. That's all." (Fujiwara recorded over sixteen people donating to the Church, although over half the total amount came from Fujiwara himself.) They corresponded about many things: about Fujiwara's getting a regular job, his stewardship, advancements in the priesthood, spreading rumors that Taylor was going to begin missionary work among the Japanese in Hawaii, and about money for a permanent building (and how the Church doesn't need "rice Christians," who only join the Church for its fancy buildings, although Taylor did admit the need for a building).(55) However, what happened next superseded all these matters in importance.

In March Fujiwara was confined to his bed for two weeks, seriously ill, until he was nursed back to health by Sister Watanabe's constant care. In the summer he became ill again and finally returned to his home in Hakkaido for a complete rest and recovery in August. For this reason the September Hattatsu was never published. From his home in September, and then from a hospital in November, he dictated letters to Taylor apologizing for not doing more work. Finally, in February 1936, Taylor received a letter from Fujiwara's father stating:
With words of regret upon his lips that he had done so little for the church, uttering words of deep gratitude to all who had helped him . . . he went to what he calls heaven. Not knowing much about his religion, it is all very strange to me. Fujiwara had died of pleurisy (and possibly tuberculosis) on 27 January 1936.(56)

Taylor reported all this in a long letter to the First Presidency in March 1936, and then asked, "Now what is to be done about a successor to Elder Fujiwara?" Yoshijiro Watanabe seemed to be the only one who could be trusted, although he was an unlearned ivory carver, and rather elderly. Watanabe had just written Taylor asking the same question, saying that he had tried to substitute for Fujiwara but was not able and was not very capable and had not been set apart so was limited in his authority. He concluded, ". . . we wish that you do not abandon the work in Japan, but that you continue it, in that connection I suggest you send someone from America or designate some desireable Japanese to carry on. Please let us know."(57)

There is no record of an answer to Watanabe, and we know very little about what happened in Japan for the next ten years. Elder Nara later called this period, "the absolute dark ages" ("Mattaku sono ju nen wa ankoku no jidai de atta").(58) But a few Saints in each city had been meeting somewhat regularly before Fujiwara's death, and there is no reason to suppose that these meetings stopped, at least for two or three years. Sister Kumagai still held her meetings, and at least one member, Brother Ono, came for a while.(59)

It would be interesting to know the details of this period when there was no presiding elder, for the Brother Katuras and Watanabes may prove to be the real heroes of this period. They were never the great initiators, but they endured through it all humbly and faithfully, giving constant support to whomever the leaders might have been. As Taylor once described Watanabe, "he has always confessed his membership in the Church and one who had, in this feeble way, supported every movement attempted for the Saints since the closing."(60)

In April and May of 1939, Hilton A. Robertson made an official visit to Japan on behalf of the Church. With only inaccurate addresses, he began searching for Nami Suzuki, an old sister who had once lived in and cooked for the mission home. Of all the millions in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, a young girl emerged from a public bath, saw the foreigner and asked what he wanted. When Robertson told her, she said, "That's my mother." She took him right to Sister Suzuki's, and Robertson got other addresses from her. He visited the Tokyo, Sapporo, and Osaka Saints, and assured them that they had not been forgotten and that missionaries would return some day. While in Japan he baptized several new members--the two surviving children(61) of Sister Suzuki (with Elder Watanabe confirming) and Elder Katsura's daughter (with Katsura confirming), among others.(62)

Whatever the Church activities there were during these years, they probably ended with the war. Cards and letters were exchanged, but formal meetings were not allowed. Police precautions were very strict.(63) It would be interesting to know the thoughts of the Saints during the war--how they resolved the conflict that may have arisen in their minds when they found the country they loved fighting against a country closely aligned with the Church they loved. Sister Kumagai, at least, claims there really was no conflict. She thought that both the Japanese and Americans fought because they loved their countries, and therefore had no hatred for either side. Her only prayer during that time was for peace and the reestablishment of the mission. She also said that all who worked with her at a local newspaper knew of her Christian affiliation, but never gave her any persecution or abuse because of it.64 Thus the members sat out the war years without any outward activity or signs of Church membership. In spite of the lack of activity in Japan during these years, a mighty work was being accomplished among the Japanese elsewhere.

Although the First Presidency neither appointed a replacement for Fujiwara after his death in 1936, nor sent a "high apostle" to reopen the mission (as Tomigoro Takagi had suggested), they had not ignored the work among the Japanese. Rather, they gave heed to another suggestion Fujiwara had sent before his death: "I am sorry to tell you that the older members are mostly unenthusiastic at my work. . . . Better make new members than struggle to help the old ones. It would take less energy, effort and courage.(65)"

Within eight months after receiving Taylor's report about Fujiwara's death, they called ex-mission president Hilton A. Robertson to reestablish the Japanese Mission, but with headquarters in Honolulu, "from which base of operations the president and missionaries will work among the Japanese people of Hawaii and also the established branches of Japanese members in Japan."(66)

A great deal of the credit for the initiation of the work among the Japanese in Hawaii goes to one person, Sister Tsune Nachie, who had been working among her people since 1923. She went out each morning with her Church books and a few pamphlets in Japanese language, tied in a large handkerchief, and visited diligently among her people and preached the Gospel to them.(67) Because of her efforts, in the spring of 1934, a Japanese Sunday School class was started as a separate unit of Kalihi Branch. When Elder Fujiwara passed through in August on his return to Japan, about thirty Japanese were attending. The brethren that came to organize the Oahu Stake in 1935 were so impressed with the class that they organized it as a special unit in the stake under new first counselor, Edward Clissold.(68)

They began to talk of a special mission for the Orientals in Hawaii on 24 February 1937. In October three missionaries arrived, and by the end of the year there were eighteen baptized members, all active. The environment, results, characters and condition of the mission in Hawaii were so different from those in Japan that it should be a subject for a long paper in itself. Briefly, we can simply say that with fewer language and social barriers, the Japanese in Hawaii had a different attitude towards Mormonism than did the Japanese in Japan. The mission was immediately successful, more missionaries were sent, and baptisms increased, until the war came and missionaries had to be withdrawn. Year end totals more easily show the mission progress:(69)

Not only were they numerically successful, but if tithe paying is any indication, the converts were the most faithful in the world. In 1954, for example, over 97% were tithe payers, which compares with only 61% paid in the non-Japanese Hawaiian Mission, and less elsewhere.(70)

The mission definitely progressed. When aged Sister Nachie died in December 1938, President Robertson stated that the Lord had left her until he had twenty-five missionaries to replace her.(71) In 1939 Robertson made his trip to Japan. In 1940 he was replaced by J.C. Jensen, who became ill at the end of 1942 and was replaced by Edward L. Clissold. When Castle Murphy took over in 1944, there were just seven missionaries because of the war; and also, because of the bad connotations of the word "Japanese" during the war, the name of the mission was changed to the Central Pacific Mission.(72) Melvyn Weenig became mission president in 1946 and, with the end of the war, dozens of missionaries were sent to the mission, several of whom were later transferred to Japan itself in 1948.

The greatest contribution of the work in Hawaii is just being seen today in Japan. Almost every major mission leader in Japan from the mid-1960s until now was converted or served as a missionary in Hawaii under the Japanese Mission.

In 1945 when the war ended, the few members in Japan had been waiting for twenty-one years for the reestablishment of the mission. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, Japanese people had been joining the Church in exciting numbers. It was now time to join these two elements and let the fusion bring forth a new era of missionary work among the Japanese people.

LDS servicemen, who began entering Japan in late August 1945 along with occupation forces, immediately began sharing the gospel with the native Japanese they met. Edward L. Clissold also entered Japan as a member of MacArthur's staff in 1945, and ran an ad in the Mainichi newspaper asking all Tokyo Saints to come and meet him at the Dai Ichi Hotel. Brother and Sister Nara (recently returned from Manchuria) and Sister Watanabe met with him at once and requested the restoration of the mission.(73)

By the time Clissold left Japan in 1945, local servicemen, especially nisei like Brothers Komatsu and Horiuchi, who had been converted in Hawaii, had begun aiding the Saints and conducting small Sunday Schools in their homes. As the group grew they moved from meeting in a small from in Nara's niece's house, to a school in Roppongi to a large home in Gotanda. By 1948 about fifty were meeting in Ogikubo. The Saints in Hawaii were sending a lot of goods to help destitute Saints in Japan, and servicemen brought young war orphans to Sunday School classes.(74)

On 6 March 1948, Clissold returned as mission president, and the mission was officially reestablished. Due to his particular assignment on MacArthur's staff (an assignment he had not desired at the time), he had the exact connections he needed to get the Church going again.(75) The first thing to do was to get a permanent building. In April 1948 a partially burnt house in Azabu was obtained. Renovation began in May, and on Thanksgiving Day 1948 the building was dedicated. The mission in Japan would be permanent this time.(76)

Among the very first baptisms of the new mission, was that of Nara's wife Motoko, on 6 April 1948, performed by President Clissold.(77) Another group was baptized in November. The first five missionaries finally got permission and entered the country on 26 June 1948. By the end of that year there were seventeen missionaries (six nisei), twenty-two baptisms, and several different Sunday Schools being held with over 900 attending the various areas.(78)

Missionary numbers increased and they were sent out into all the old areas and many new ones. Elder Matthew Cowley saw a bright future for Japan when he dedicated the mission home and said, "there will some day be many church buildings and even temples built in this land."(79) Members and missionaries became numerous, and communication with the Church became a daily affair. It was a different place indeed. As of 1974 there are six different mission in Japan and three stakes.(80) As an indication of this success, during his first general conference as President of the Church, Spencer W. Kimball challenged Japan to, ". . . furnish its own 1,000 missionaries and then eventually 10,000 more for Mongolia and China."(81) But that is another story.

The history of the Church in Japan in the period between missions is not a history involving great movements or controlling forces, but is rather a documentation of how individual people reacted to a particularly hard situation.

Perhaps this type of subtle adversity brings out a person's true character--in all its diversities. Some members may have actually been made stronger during the Church's absence. Others fell away all the more quickly. Some hung on, barely, and others did not have the strength to make it alone. Some were insulted, some hurt, and others basically unaffected. Nara reappeared after World War II as enthusiastic as the day the first Shuro came out, and as recently as 9 September 1973 was set apart as a stake patriarch by Elder Thomas S. Monson. Brothers Katsura and Watanabe seemed to have pursued a steady course throughout the years regardless of the external conditions of the Church. Some members never supported the Church during the interim, but came back enthusiastically once the Church proved its devotion to Japan. Others, perhaps longing for a more intimate and simple organization, served less valiantly after the reopening of the mission and the subsequent successes. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the closing and interim period was that some who truly loved the Church felt deserted and disappointed by the closing, and ended up "in the Church" but less than they might have been otherwise.

How do we judge the effect this period has had on the future of the Japan missions? Why is all the research, interviewing, translating, and corresponding that still needs to be done if we are to truly understand the many mysteries of this period really necessary? The Hawaiian period is obviously important in that it produced so many of today's leaders. But what difference do Fujiwara's life and death, Yamaide's poetry, Kuriayama's inactivity, Kumagai's enthusiasm, Watanabe's steadiness, Nara's initiative and Yoneyama's hurt make on the future of the Church in Japan? Perhaps their lives can teach us a few things: like an essential quality of both Japanese culture and Mormonism--true endurance. In their lives we can see the complex effect a simple act like closing down an area can have on faithful Latter-day Saints. But more important, in this day when we are striving to be a worldwide church, their lives serve as prime examples of the fact that one can be a good Mormon without being an American or Utahn. The Japanese who joined the Church in large numbers--in Hawaii and in post-war Japan--were those partially made, or ready to be partially made into Americans. But the fact that a few endured faithful to the Church at a time in Japan's history when being truly Japanese was everything, proves that one can still keep his culture and be a good Latter-day Saint. For two decades they had nothing to sustain them--nothing but the true essence of the gospel without any external organizational or cultural reinforcements, and yet some still made it. The numbers of those who didn't make it untouched shows that this may be extremely difficult--perhaps harder than it should be. But it is possible.