Koji

15 February 2015

Dear Phyllis,

My dear buddy Dick Dennis got a pass about 18 years ago to be excused from all the hassle here to worship Jesus in a better environment in heaven. His wife, Millie, used to write me occasionally but it had been a long time since last hearing from Millie. Last week I had an unexpected letter from Millie suggesting my friend Koji had gone on. If this report is true that is indeed a shock. Koji was the closest friend I ever had on this planet. He was a man that I admired more intensely, and thought of more highly than any man I have ever met. Koji had an amazing testimony.

His story started with his sister Rachel Sekiguchi. Rachel's testimony was a legend. She was a high school girl in Oguri, which is a village tucked away in the backside of nowhere in Japan. She found a tract in a book that had been handed out first in Karuizawa, and then brought down to Oguri, handed to another person, who put it in a book. Rachel got that tract fourth hand. In her heart she had been searching for truth and a purpose for living. When she read that tract something rang in her heart that that message was true and Jesus was the way. Her father was the local shinto priest and she was terrified to ask permission to go to Karuizawa to attend a Christian conference. To her utter amazement her father said, “You go to Karuizawa and learn about your God and come back to tell us.” Rachel was saved and returned home to lead her entire family to Christ.

Rachel enrolled in the Bible school in Karuizawa and, much to his displeasure, brought her younger brother, Koji, to live at the school while he attended junior and senior high school in Karuizawa. Koji's room mate was Kimura san who had been a pilot in the Japanese army during the war. For the next several years Koji got filled with thrilling flying stories that inflamed him with a desire to be a pilot. He knew the Gospel message was true but didn't care for forced Christianity.

After Koji graduated from high school he ran away and joined the Japanese Self Defense Force. Being a very bright energetic lad he qualified for pilot training and went into flight training. But he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It wasn't a matter of believing in Jesus. He knew the Gospel message was true and that was ruining his life. All his buddies were going into town and having the time of their life in bars and with the girls. He desperately wanted to be like them and enjoy a life of sin, but knowing the truth about the Bible was wrecking his life. He couldn't enjoy sin. How he wished he had never heard it.

One day he was talking with a classmate about death. He asked, “Aren't you concerned about death?” His friend replied, “No, not at all. Death is no problem. All you do is say, 'Ten no heika sama, Banzai, Banzai, Banzi', and go out” (Cheers for the emperor). No problem. Koji wasn't sure.

The next day he was standing near mobile control at the end of the runway watching birds take off. One T-33 got about 20 feet in the air and flamed out. There wasn't much of the runway left and they went through the perimeter fence finally coming to a halt in a ditch not far away. Koji was the first man at the scene. The pilots were unhurt but the fuselage was twisted in the crash and they couldn't get the canopy opened. The drop tanks on the tip of the wings were ruptured and there was JP4 jet fuel all over the place. There is a handle on the outside of the T-bird that a person can open the canopy from the outside. Koji grabbed that handle and pulled. Nothing happened. He was back on top of the fuselage talking to the pilots who were trapped inside screaming to get them out. The fellow in the back seat was his buddy he had been talking to the day before. Then the fire started. As it got hotter and hotter he had to back away and watched, to his horror, his friend burn to death in that cockpit. Koji said it wasn't Banzai. It was just awful. That sobered him up. From that moment on he decided that was not the future he wanted and got serious with Jesus.

He was within weeks of graduation but was having terrible pain with air blocks in his ear from the pressure change coming down from high altitude. In desperation he went to the base hospital. An examination revealed that the hole in the eustachian tube in the inner ear was unusually small making it impossible for the inner ear to adjust to air pressure change. He was red-lined. That was the end of his flying career.

Koji got of the military, went back to Karuizawa, and married a girl in the school there. In his own way he was trying to serve the Lord but had a lot of bad things happen to them. In 1968 he was at loose ends between jobs. I was running the language school at the time and had a need for someone to run the language lab for me for one week. He came to fill in for one week, and that was a relationship that lasted for ten years. He became my closest friend. He was the best man at my wedding. His sister Rachel was a missionary to Brazil who had been a classmate of my wife, Rosemary, at Prairie Bible Institute. Rachel happened to be home at that time, and she was Rosemary's maid of honor. I taught Koji construction and he finally left the school to start his own construction company.

Over the years we drifted far apart. Koji was controversial. There is no question that he did a few bad things. But the thing that always impressed me the most was that, when confronted with his wrong, he was unusually frank and honest to own up to what happened. This was perhaps his finest quality. He was generally recognized as a pillar of the church. His children were good in following the Lord and he was always concerned to do anything he could to salvage any wayward young man. My own son Dave worked for Koji for a couple of years.

If this report is indeed true that Koji has joined Dick and dozens of other friends on the other side of the River, that is a real shock. The last I saw Koji was about 15 years ago. He was still a very active strong man as he always had been. It I hard to believe that Koji got there first. But someday we all will again be united and enjoy a far more wonderful life than what we are experiencing here now. And best of all we will be sinless in loving and serving Jesus.

Thank God,

                              bill

PS: I just got another letter from Millie saying that the report may not be accurate. But if it is...