Ron and Marlene

12 April 2020

Dear Phyllis,

Today is Resurrection Sunday. It was 61 years ago today that I stood in front of a packed house in a small church just outside the main gate of Yokota Air Base and said, “Good morning folks. Welcome to the Church of The Open Door”.

It had been four months before then that I walked in the dining room of the Officers Club to have breakfast that I saw a man sitting by himself with a well read, dog-eared, Bible on the table. I walked over and asked, “May I join you? I gather you know the Lord”. The man stuck his hand out and replied, “Yes. Please. My name is Russ O'Quinn. I am the teacher of the adult Bible class a the base chapel”. I had only been in Japan a few hours and Russ was literally the first man I met in Japan. He was a civilian tech rep with Douglas Aircraft Co. and was a gifted, dynamic, speaker. He was easily God's #1 man at Yokota. I was one of the first Christian jet fighter pilots Russ had met and I was love at first sight. For the next few months we were inseparable. Russ had been in Japan slightly less than a year and talked his way into a Wednesday night Bible study and the Sunday morning Bible class at the base chapel. The problem was; more folks had gotten saved through Russ' preaching and going home, than stayed for the Sunday morning worship. Chaplin JN Bradberry was furious and threw us out of the chapel and off base. We had a burden that we wanted to start our own church and went to Tamadaiya Height housing association asking if we could rent a house and convert it to a church. They told us they were planning on a new development project and would build a church to our specification. The Church of the Open Door was born on Easter Sunday 1959.

When the O'Quinns were returned to the states later that year we wrote to Jessie Miller of The Overseas Christian Servicemen Center in Denver asking if they had a missionary they could send over to take the church as a missionary project. In July 1960 Ron and Marlene Blough got off the boat in Yokohama to take on the COD as their missionary project. Ron was a former marine who had just graduated from Bob Jones University and became a legend. He was totally undisciplined, hot-headed, and wild as a spring hare. But a man with a deep commitment to Jesus Christ, uncompromising excellent convictions, and a passionate message for soul winning. We were on a collusion course. It was awful. Sunday after Sunday I would come away from service in tears saying, “I can't take it any more”. But I knew quitting was not an option. If I pulled out over half the church would come out with me and that would destroy the church. Of grim necessity, Ron and I developed a system of having breakfast at the O Club about once a month, where we would show up with clenched fists ready to kill each other, have it out with frank, honest, open exchange and two hours later leave, the best of friends with deep respect for each other. That saved the church.

Ron found a former night club half way between the main gate and the bar district that was for rent. There was a good house right behind the club where the Bloughs could live. We converted that into the Christian Terrace. It was excellent - but nobody came in. Ron stood in front of the Terrace passing out tracts to EVERY soul that passed by for several days. Oddly enough the trickle of pedestrians dried up until there was virtually no one walking by. But Ron noticed the taxi company was doing a land-grant business with a steady stream of taxis going by like we had never seen. The GIs would rather pay 50 yen to ride 400 meters than to walk past the Terrace. One Saturday Ron and I were talking about the problem and someone made the unwise suggestion, “Let's go down to the bar district to get them”. Neither one of us wanted to go but we both were too proud to back down. The result was we shamed ourselves into doing it. That night we got together about eight to ten of our best men to go down to the bar district to have our first street meeting. It was hilarious. When we rounded the corner to head down the bar district street, we locked arms and started marching singing Onward Christian Soldiers. The street was jammed with hundreds of GIs and prostitutes out in the street talking. Suddenly it was like an alarm went off. The entire crowd turned in stunned disbelief and stared at us. When we marched 300 meter to the end of the street and got up on a stone wall outside Kay's Bar, the street was totally deserted. There wasn't a dog in sight. Everyone had fled. That started a season that lasted nearly two years of going down to the bar district to have a street meeting every Friday and Saturday night.

The Church of the Open Door was a period that lasted from 1959 to 1966. It was the epic period of my life. It was the time when my roots went deep in the soil learning how to walk with and serve Christ. It was the time when I developed the convictions and methods that have guided my life for the next six decades. I list Ron Blough in the top five men who have had the greatest formative influence on my life. I read a large number of missionary biographies, but I saw in Ron animated the principles of faith that others simply wrote about.

The early years at the COD were utterly unique. We were extremely black and white. Thee was no middle ground. You either loved us or hated us. There was a bit of the moving of the Holy Spirit when we saw some of the finest conversion I have ever experienced. We seldom ran much more than 18-20 people in a service, but of the ones who passed through the vast majority either wound up in full-time service or went on to be major lay-leaders in any church they attended.

Ron and I were both from Pennsylvania and never had any racial feelings. In the 60s segregation was natural but we had two black families. Walt Leper was a phenomenon. He was just plain sharp. You didn't expect to see a man of his caliber in black skin. He would have been an executive in any major corporation. George Abernathy was different. He was just plain southern nigger. For 100 years “nigger” was an acceptable term with no particular derogatory insinuation. Pastors frequently used it in messages. It wasn't until the 1970s and 80s that political correctness converted it into it into an unmentionable four letter word. But in the 60s there were two types of blacks – there were colored and niggers. George was just plain nigger from Alabama. But we loved him. He was colorful. “Yes, aaas saved, Yes aaas saved”. Well, maybe. But we loved George. Then George met Jesus. I never saw such a transformation of man in my life. All the southern colored tapestry disappeared and the most serious man of God you ever saw emerged. George became the finest black Bible teacher I have ever met in my life. The man became a giant.

Ron and I were an excellent team running the COD until in 1962 I was discharged from the Air Force and went to Karuizawa, But for the next two years I would frequently stop by whenever I could. In 1964 my health broke and I had to return to the states for a furlough. In 1965 Ron and Marlene had completed a five year term and went home for a year.. I would have taken the church had I been there but in my absence Ron left the work with Les Fraiser who had come a year prior to head up the Bob Jones ministry in Japan. In September 1965 I returned to Japan. I landed at Haneda around 5:00 o'clock Sunday afternoon and caught a train out to Fusa (Yokota). It was too late for the evening service so I went straight to Bloughs house to wait for the folks to get home from church. At 9:30 a car pulled in the driveway and I walked over greeting, “Les Fraiser?”. A voice in the darkness spoke, “No, I am Pat Melton”. Pat had only been there a month when Les turned the work over to him.

Pat was straight out of Bob Jones and stepped into a buzz saw. He was not prepared for the problems to face him. For the next year he would call me in Karuizawa and I would go down to Yokota to jack him up and encourage him to gambatte (hang tough). The next year in September Ron and Marlene returned to take the church back only to discover it had been reduced to ashes. Their first Sunday I went down to see Ron and Marlene. That Sunday Ron preached morning and evening and I led the services. That night we had three missionary couples and two GIs in attendance. The next morning Ron went to see the land lord to pay the rent and was informed that the land had been sold. That was it.

I had the privilege of being the man who stood up the first morning to say, “Good morning folks. Welcome to the Church of the Open Door. And seven years later I had the privilege of leading the final meeting and say the closing prayer, “In Jesus Name Amen”

                                                  bill