What would you preach to your congregation the week before your members were shipped off to an internment camp simply because they were of Japanese heritage? Pastor Tom Sugimura wrote about these pastors and their messages in an article in Christianity Today called How Japanese American Pastors Prepared their Flocks for Internment.
Tom Sugimura is also a SOLA Editorial Board member, so we invited him to talk to us about the research he did for his article and to give us more insight into the Japanese people who lived through the camps, including his own family. SOLA Editorial Curator Aaron Lee interviewed him, and we invite you to listen to their conversation here.
You can also watch their talk on YouTube, listen to the audio on Podcasts, or read the transcript below. Please note the transcript has only been lightly edited and may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
Aaron Lee: Hi, everyone, this is Aaron for SOLA Network. And I’m here today with Pastor Tom Sugimura. Pastor Tom, it’s good to see you. I’ve been reading your work for a really long time. But I think this is the first time we’re actually talking in person. It’s good to talk to you.
Tom Sugimura: Yeah, definitely Same here. Aaron, it’s good to hear from you and good to work with you as well.
Aaron Lee: You wrote an article recently called “How Japanese American Pastors Prepared their Flocks for Internment.” And this was about sermons preached the Sunday before they were sent off, exhorting suffering Christians to find hope in Jesus and to continue gathering together. Can you introduce yourself and talk briefly about your article?
Tom Sugimura: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, I’m a pastor here in Woodland Hills, California that’s called New Life Church. And also I serve alongside with you on the Editorial Board for SOLA Network. And I’ve written this article on the Japanese American church during World War II and the internment. I am half Japanese, my father’s side is Japanese Sansei third generation, so it’s a little bit of family history, as well as just interest in what God was doing during that period, that season of life. So the article was written about sermons that were preached on the Sunday before evacuation, the Sunday before the Japanese Americans on the Pacific West Coast were taken away to camps, assembly centers, relocation centers, and most of them were behind barbed wire for about two or three years during the World War II period.
Aaron Lee: How did you go about researching this article?
Tom Sugimura: That’s a good question. A lot of it was was material that I’ve written previously. I’ve written a lot of stories, a lot of articles, just for my own sake, learning about these things. And so it came out of that.
But my goal was to see – what would pastors say to their congregations? If you got a few days before an event, a date that is scheduled? You’ve got your constituents leaving their homes and going to an unloading station… what would you say to them? Well, how would you encourage them… what what would you counsel them with, and especially from God’s Word? And so I started with that premise in mind, and then I came across these sermons and it pretty much answered that question.
Aaron Lee: And this collection of sermons was called “The Sunday Before.” Was it a book or a manuscript? What kind of form was it in?
Tom Sugimura: That’s exactly what the thing was called: “The Sunday Before.” It’s an unpublished manuscript. It was friends of the Japanese Americans. And it gives a little bit of historical background, a little bit of their biography, but really just walks through the sermons that a number of these pastors preached on a Sunday before evacuation. And there were probably 100 or so churches, Japanese American churches at the time of World War II. And so this is just a handful of them and what their pastors shared with their flocks at that time.
Aaron Lee: How did you feel when you found this unpublished manuscript? I mean, I feel like it’s a goldmine, especially if you’re interested in it.
Tom Sugimura: It is. Yeah, I’ve been I’ve been reading about the internment since college, kind of a hobby of mine. And I’ve probably read hundreds of books and resources and articles. And it’s interesting, as a Christian, I’m looking for where is Christ in all this, where’s the church in all of this, and so most of the things that have been written have been written from historical viewpoints, sociological viewpoints. So it’s not trying to express the Christian viewpoint, even though that was a major factor for many of these Japanese Americans. And so in a 200 page book you might get one or two pages on the church… and so when I found these sermons, this is right up my alley. I can pick apart the sermon and see what these pastors were trying to do, but I can also put myself in the pew, and think as a church member, what would I think about? What would I imagine as my pastor is preaching this to me, so yeah, I came at it from that perspective.
Aaron Lee: Do you feel removed from the event? Do you feel like enough time has passed? You weren’t there. But how much do you feel when you’re reading about this? How does it affect you?
Tom Sugimura: There isn’t the same emotional impact as if I was there in the camps. My grandparents were in camps, and our aunt and my uncle, my dad was born a few years after the camps. So there’s not that emotional, like I was there, I can experience you know, but it was my family’s story. It was something that happened. But as a writer, I’m going in to try to put myself in those shoes as much as possible to empathize to, to put myself in their shoes.
And so like I said, I’m thinking as a preacher, what are the major themes here? What’s the homiletical process here? What are these preachers trying to do, to minister to their flocks in the midst of suffering as well as knowing that they’re going through the same thing? So they’re reaching out of their own weakness, they’re relying on the strength of Christ in their own weakness, and then sitting in the pews as well.
And thinking to myself, well, imagine if I’m a young boy, it’s the Sunday before evacuation, our bags are packed, we’ve sold all of our material possessions for pennies on the dollar, we’ve given away the deed to our house, to our farm, to our store, business, whatever it might be to friends, or whoever it is, that’s going to take it from us, you know, we can’t even take pets with us, or whatever it is.
So you know, it’s having that mindset of sitting in church. And this is the last Sunday I might hear from my pastor. This is a church where I’ve grown up in, my parents have grown up in, we’ve built it with our own hands. And my pastor has one sermon to give me right before we head off to camp. And so putting myself in that position, it allows me to at least gain a small understanding of what the Japanese Americans were going through during that time.
Aaron Lee: You said you’re coming at it from a preaching standpoint. So would you say you’re analyzing the sermons, more than sitting there trying to let it affect your emotions? Is that a fair way to look at it?
Tom Sugimura: Um, not so much from a preaching lab analytic. The sermons that the pastors… at this time, they’re going through a ton of emotional… they’re functioning as the liaisons between the government and the people as some of those who are the only ones who can speak English. So they don’t have a ton of time throughout their weeks to do exegetical study. And so a lot of this is pouring out of their hearts. Right, the emotional. It’s narrative, they’re drawing on favorite passages and characters in Scripture. They’re bringing up the traditional hymns.
And so a lot of what they’re bringing out of these messages on the Sunday before, it is not, you know, technically precise in terms of sermons. So I’m not analyzing it in that sense, but more of the emotional impact on me. How would I receive this? If this was my pastor’s message to me?
Aaron Lee: I see. I want to talk about how you got into this. You said that it was part of your family history. But I want to hear your journey. When did that click to you – like, hey, I have some family history here. What was your journey like as you grew older, and maybe got more info about all of this? Can you kind of take us on that journey?
Tom Sugimura: You know, I was in college when I first started getting into it, reading books and studying it for myself, and we didn’t really talk about it. I wasn’t a part of the Japanese American community growing up. My grandparents, that first generation, they never really talked to me. They just call it a camp, and you think maybe summer camp. Yeah, but now they don’t think that you don’t think about that. And so I didn’t study it in school. I didn’t really have conversations with my family. And so I learned it more by talking to people when I got to college and learning about these things and and realizing that this was actually a big deal in American history, and also a big deal in our own story.
And so I began had to study it for myself during those times and really just an organic kind of process of learning.
Aaron Lee: Did you dive into books? Did you read old newspapers? What was it exactly to talk to your family?
Tom Sugimura: Yeah, I obviously read books, went to films, there’s more on the college campus in terms of how you can just explore whatever it is that you want. Over time, I have talked to different people interviewed people, there’s a treasure trove of resources now that’s available. And so I’ve kind of taken a second stab at it. These last 5-10 years of looking at it through the perspective of being a pastor, local counselor, trying to sort through all the all the ways that the Church ministered to one another during the internment, and seeing all the similarities and parallels to how I’m seeking to minister to the people in my congregation, or those that are suffering that come for counseling. So there’s a lot of similarities, a lot of parallels that the church has been doing the same thing all throughout the years. And, so it’s not a surprise to me that this is what I found, but it was encouraging to see that this was what was happening during the interim period.
Aaron Lee: Let’s go ahead and just talk about that right now. What similarities do you see happening, whether it’s specifically in the Japanese American church or evangelicalism at large?
Tom Sugimura: Yeah, the Japanese American church, it was drawing upon a lot of a lot of the ministry that was traditional, that was conservative. And so at the time, obviously, you had preaching, the public ministry of the Word. You had preachers who were digging deep into the scriptures and presenting it to their people and ministering to them week after week. So I think preaching was a part of that ministry. You had the ministry of presence. So just knowing that you had a pastor who would shepherd you, who would go with you who many of these pastors, they would go with their flocks into the camps, they were in the relocation centers. And during the first week or two, they would start churches so that they could have a place to fellowship. A place to worship. So you have the ministry of presence.
You have hymns, traditional hymns that were sung for years in these Japanese American churches, that drew a lot of them together. And so as they as they think back on their Christian heritage, they’re remembering not just Scripture, and precious truths from God’s Word, but also these rich lyrics in the hymns that they find. So encouraging. And so you have the singing. I think soul care was another big one.
And in the camps, everybody was together, everyone was packed within, you know, a few square miles. And so you could, as a minister, make all of your visits on a bicycle in a single day, and you’re visiting people in their homes, and you’re knocking on their doors and you’re evangelizing, you’re discipling. And so there was probably even more ministry being done within the camps than there was prior to the camps. And so part of God’s sovereignty is that people came to Christ. People were discipled. They grew in their faith. I think the church itself grew during this period of time. And so there’s a lot that that carried on, even after the camps. But much of that was cultivated in the midst of adversity.
Aaron Lee: The camps play such a big part – I feel like – in the Japanese American church. Can you give us even more of the history for our audience, to broaden our eyes so we can get more of the picture? What makes the Japanese American church so unique and so special, even apart from the camps?
Tom Sugimura: Starting in the camps, what you see is that the first generation the Issei, mostly immigrant, mostly Japanese speaking, that’s where the pastor’s were, and the Nikkei, the second generation, that they’re probably 30 and under. So you had a small percentage of the pastors in the Nikkei Church, the Japanese American church being English speaking. And yet, imagine that you think about putting a 30 year old in charge of a church, or 20 something year old in charge of instruction. That’s what was happening in the camps.
And so because of the need for ministers, especially to the English speaking population, you had these 20 somethings to rise to the challenge, being put into places of ministry leadership, and given opportunities to pastor churches and preach sermons and do visitations. And so when they exited the camps after World War II, they had been trained in the midst of this really chaotic period of time. And they came out of that, wanting to go to seminary wanting to become pastors.
JEMS (Japanese Evangelical Mission Society) was started about a decade later about with just a bunch of people getting together for a prayer meeting and saying, let’s reach Japan. And so you see this outgrowth from the camps.
You also asked, What’s the impact today? Like I said, there’s there’s missions. JEMS is an organization, particularly on the west coast, that is trying to reach Japanese people around the world. And of course, Brazil, Peru, other places, even to places that are not Japanese speaking. So you have that outgrowth.
I think you still have a number of churches that would say we are predominantly or historically Japanese American, even though the church has brought in probably more of a pan-asian dynamic at this time. There are Japanese American churches, and so one of those benefits is that there’s still a need to reach out to the Japanese language or Japanese speaking population.
Most Japanese American churches still have an older Nissei or Japanese language congregation where they’re ministering to people in their own heart language, Bible studies, and that’s something you probably wouldn’t get in a non Japanese church. Evangelism is happening. Because there’s likeness in terms of community and culture and language, and even appearance, and it draws people. And so I think the beauty of God’s Church is that it’s big enough diversity wise for both integrated churches as well as ethnic, specific churches. And that’s what we see in the Japanese American community today.
Aaron Lee: So good. I emailed you this, but you know, personally, I’ve been impacted by the JEMS ministry. I never actually went to AACF. But my friends did. And I actually grew up playing all the JEMS songs, you know, learning all that stuff, because my parents told me to play them. So I said, okay, and I learned how to play them all. It’s amazing to see the impact that it has. And it continues today, moving into the generations, I think now, at this point.
How has your research impacted your preaching, especially in regards to these specific Japanese cultural issues? Do you shape your sermons around this type of stuff? Do you integrate your research? And then what advice would you give to those who want to preach or write or even just begin researching about their own heritage?
Tom Sugimura: That’s good. Yeah, going back just a step, you reminded me. I started going to AACF – Asian American Christian Fellowship – in college. And that was one of the ways I started to lead. I had opportunities to teach and preach and lead Bible studies. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m a pastor today – it’s because of my opportunities in college to do ministry with AACF. My worship leader right now, Lowell Sue, he’s been involved with JEMS and yeah, worship leading with them. And so there’s a lot of connections there.
But my experience in church, and even as a pastor has been more in the white and Chinese American context than the Japanese Americans. So I don’t have a ton of Japanese Americans in my congregation stream right now. So I wouldn’t say I specifically tailor it in terms of my research and my understanding, sermons and ministry or whatnot. But there’s so much richness that can be drawn out of these stories… from the the idea of joy in the midst of suffering, trusting God’s sovereignty in the midst of adversity, learning how to see hope in the desert and in the darkness. And so there’s all these different themes that I carried over into my preaching, in my writing. And in counseling ministry as well.
One of the things that I do as a counselor is I listen to people’s stories. I love stories. I love listening to them. I love reading them. And so as a counselor, one of the things I do is just listen to people’s stories and hear where they’re coming from. And then I try to connect their narrative with the biblical narrative, and then my own narrative, and then God’s meta narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.
And so as we connect all those circles together, they’re starting to see a different way to frame their story, and a different way that their story actually fits within God’s bigger story. And so those are some of the ways that it impacts my ministry. It really just started as a way to get to know my grandparents. And it’s morphed into something bigger than that, as we continued on.
Aaron Lee: I’ve been blessed by your work. What advice would you give to preachers or writers who want to start looking at their cultural heritage, doing the research, and writing about it?
Tom Sugimura: Yeah, that’s great. Be curious, ask good questions. Find out more – and not with the goal of publishing an article or writing a book – but to connect to build relationships. And that’s the biggest part of when you when you ask someone, hey, tell me your story. Let me hear what what’s been going on in your life. Or tell me a little bit about your background… you’re asking the person to give you a little of themselves. And you’re making that relational connection.
Just a side note. We’ve been… we just wrote a memoir for my father in law, my wife’s dad, and tells a story of his escape from Vietnam, and just saw the stories of his growing up and, and one of the reasons we did it was not to write a book. It took us like five years to finish. But one of the reasons we did it was to sit down with him, and to have an opportunity to have those conversations, and to show him the honor of saying, Hey, we care about your story. We want to hear about your your childhood, we want to learn about how difficult it was for for you and your family coming over from Vietnam.
And it was a chance to connect with him, to this man that, you know, I can’t speak his language. He can’t speak mine. But my wife is translating, and we’re writing these things down. And that’s what sharing stories does for us. It’s something that, you know, humanity has done since the beginning of time, but sometimes we get too busy and we stop asking people, Hey, what’s your story? And I think really just that’s what writing is just a way of encapsulating it, but you don’t have to actually write it down to enjoy the benefit of hearing stories.
Aaron Lee: That’s a great way to end. I can’t think of a better way to end this convo than with that. Thank you so much for sharing your story with everybody.
Tom Sugimura: Well, thanks for having me on Aaron. Appreciate it.