Last month in Tokyo, Saburo Sakai died at age 84. He suffered a fatal heart attack as he reached across a dining room table to shake the hand of an American military officer. This event marked the end of a life spanning most of the twentieth century and one marked by both extraordinary exploits and a later dramatic change of direction.

News reports about Sakai caught my attention because World War II still retains a strong hold on my imagination. Though not a war veteran myself, I followed the battles of WWII with rabid interest as I entered into my teenage years. Like many other Americans of that time, I internalized the negative images of both German and Japanese warriors, especially as they were presented in Hollywood films.

Images of Japanese fighter pilots in particular fascinated me because of their skills and their evil intentions against our military forces. I remember seeing actors portraying them sitting in their Zeros grinning malevolently as they dove on American ships and planes. They did not seem like human beings but rather instruments of the devil and of the evil Japanese emperor.

Sakai was one of those pilots but one whose aerial warfare skills surpassed almost everyone else’s. According to the New York Times obituary to which I am indebted for the information here, he claimed to have shot down 64 planes, starting with aircraft from the Chinese Air Force. On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he shot down an American P-40 over the Philippines and, in the following month, a B-17, the first American bomber to be downed in the Pacific.

He himself took a bullet in the face from an American torpedo bomber in August of 1942 but he managed to get back to his base in New Guinea, some 500 nautical miles away. In 1983, Sakai met the gunner who hit him, a man named Harry Jones from Nevada. The two of them enjoyed talking with one another, according to a newspaper account of their meeting.

This meeting was one of many he had with his former adversaries. He visited the United States a dozen times and met people with whom he been locked in deadly combat. In doing so, he showed extraordinary flexibility of character, especially considering his upbringing and education.

His family, though poor farmers, claimed kinship with the Samurais, Japan’s warrior class. Sakai was taught a code of conduct called Bushido whereby one learns to live prepared to die. This ideology gave him unyielding motivation in his wartime exploits. It makes more amazing his ability after the war to change his values so sharply. According to a web site article about him, Sakai said that he had not killed any creature, “not even a mosquito,” since stepping out of his Zero at the time of Japan’s surrender.

Religion made a difference for him: the same web site reports that Sakai became a Buddhist acolyte and practiced atonement. He came to see that Japanese leaders, especially the Emperor, had betrayed their trust and he felt that they avoided taking responsibility for their actions.

The transition of the Japanese nation from an enemy country toward close friendship with our country ranks as one of the greatest historical changes in my lifetime. The extent of this change can be gauged from what I confess to be vestigial feelings about Japanese people that I still experience. These feelings never influence my actions; they are purely relics of deep emotions that touched me in those teenage years.

When I encounter Japanese tourists visiting my hometown, I am of course polite to them and reach out to them in welcoming friendship. Enmity toward them left over from the war is not something that I have to struggle against.

And yet, I sometimes spontaneously fantasize about them as adult children and grandchildren of men who savagely warred against Americans and the people of other nations as well. The memory of crimes that Japanese forces committed against others is lodged deeply within me, having fed my young imagination.

But I do not have to be defensive about these imaginings; rather they witness to how far we have come to our friendship. The passage was from acute resentment to one of mutual respect and harmony. It ranks as a triumph of human capacity for change for the values that dignify us all.

By his extraordinary ability to change radically, Saburo Sakai is representative of many more citizens of his nation who were able, in middle age and later, to turn from warmaking to peacemaking. From having been military heroes, some of them, they led the way toward becoming heroes of peace.

And so are Americans veterans of WWII who long ago also changed into exemplars of peace and reconciliation. They too deserve widespread appreciation for having accepted former enemies as fellow citizens of the world and even friends.

Richard Griffin

On the morning of June 7, 1968, I heard the shocking news. For the third time in the same decade, a national leader had been shot and killed. Only two months previously, Martin Luther King had been assassinated; that killing had come but five years after the shooting of the president, John F. Kennedy.

To me it came as a blow to discover that Bobby Kennedy was the victim this time, felled in the basement of a Los Angeles hotel by a gunman who had an odd, repetitious name. The murder of this 42-year-old leader struck me, and everyone else I knew, as a blow not only against us but against the nation itself.

I remember feeling a vivid sense of dislocation, a deep uneasiness about the future of our country. American society seemed to be coming apart, rent by violence and unsure of its destiny. Never before had I experienced such widely shared feelings of disorientation.

To me, by the late 1960s, Robert Kennedy carried the hope of bringing the Vietnam War to an end and, at home, furthering the struggle for justice and peace, on behalf of minority citizens. His evident zeal for such values made me root for the success of his presidential campaign that had just scored an impressive victory in the California Democratic primary.

All of this public and private history came rushing back recently when I heard a talk by Evan Thomas, the author of a new book rather prosaically entitled “Robert Kennedy: His Life.” Thomas, an editor at Newsweek,  began by saying that anyone who writes about RFK must deal with two myths: the “good Bobby” and the “bad Bobby.” About these myths Thomas said, “Both are true, often at the same time.”

Bobby was a very different type from his brother Jack, the author emphasized. He had a strong streak of Puritanism in him and he was “a striver, a fighter, a digger.” In the Kennedy family, Bobby ranked far below the golden trio of Joe, Kathleen, and Jack. Even by the time  Jack became president, the two brothers were not close friends: only once during this period did Jack come to visit at Hickory Hill, Bobby’s home. Only after the Cuban Missile Crisis did a strong bond develop between them.

RFK felt crushed by Jack’s death, especially because he suspected that he had caused it by antagonizing the Mob and Castro. Never did he believe the findings of the Warren Commission that a single gunman acting on his own had done the horrible deed.

He also experienced a crisis in his faith: how could God allow this to happen? The search for answers drove him to read the classical Greek philosophers and dramatists and he became fascinated with the notion of  “hubris,” the pride that drives human beings to often fatal achievement.

An important point in RFK’s career came when he visited South Africa in 1966. At that time, it was dangerous for a foreign politician to go there but Bobby ignored the danger and gave hope to the oppressed black people of that country. They surged around him as he stood on top of cars to speak. Thomas quotes Margaret Marshall, then a white lawyer in South Africa,  now Chief Justice of  Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court: “He reminded me that we were not alone; he put us back into the great sweep of history.”

Evan Thomas admits to admiring Bobby. In reviewing his life, the author was most surprised by RFK’s courage. He was driven, his hands shook, he was often afraid but nonetheless he dared face the worst. Many advisors told him not to run for president, partly because of the danger of getting shot, but he was a fatalist about that peril.

Though I never met the man, I do remember seeing him play football for Harvard. Noting how small he was, I saw his courage then, in putting on a uniform and competing against players much bigger and stronger.

Other reasons for the author’s admiration are RFK’s achievements. During the thirteen fateful days of  the Cuban missile crisis, Bobby had a major influence on his brother’s decisions. “His initial impulses were terrible, he wanted to stage a provocation,” Thomas said, “but then he best captured a balanced response.” That meant keeping the pressure on the Soviets but giving them the chance to back out.

The other area of RFK’s accomplishment was the civil rights struggle. According to the author, for RFK to oppose segregation “took political guts” because the south was the backbone of the Democratic party.

Such achievements serve to keep alive the might-have-beens that many Americans of my age still fantasize about. If he had been spared deadly violence himself, could RFK have led the nation toward a resolution of the ugly mess in Vietnam a lot sooner than his successor leaders did? Could he have brought his idealism and spiritual vision to bear on our society to the benefit of all?

Richard Griffin

For much of my life I never attended a religious service other than from my own tradition. Only rarely did I even enter a non-Catholic church and I cannot remember ever having been to a synagogue or the temple of any non-Christian  religion. My family internalized the warnings of Catholic leaders not to take part in the rites of other religious groups for fear of harming the purity of our own faith.

Of course, those were pre-ecumenical days, a time when Christian churches did not go much beyond mutual toleration and non-Christian communities seemed to people like me bereft of truth about God. Looking back on that era, it is hard not to wonder how I could have been so narrow and wary of exploring different ways of being religious. One of the many reasons I value the approach of old age is the opportunity it brings to reevaluate the ideals of younger days and to experiment with the truth more freely.

These brief reflections I offer as a prelude to describing a visit to the new Mormon Temple in Belmont, that imposing structure rising up next to Route 2. My motive in wishing to see this monument was not simply to satisfy curiosity about the building but rather to explore Mormon spirituality. Apparently some other people had the same idea: how else does one explain the outpouring of an estimated eighty thousand visitors during the few weeks in which the temple was open to the general public?

In being taken through the building sacred to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as the Mormons call their community, I had the advantage of having as guide Roger Porter, who has served as a bishop. In his professional life, he is a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and he has worked in the White House as a policy advisor to Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush.

Talking beforehand with Professor Porter, I asked what his religious tradition means to him. His response has stayed with me: “I find inspiration from my faith in virtually everything I do.” That he and his fellow Mormons has discovered such life- shaping meaning in this home-grown American religious tradition coming from the early nineteenth century provokes me to reflection. Appreciation of his faith from Roger Porter and millions of other people helps explain why Mormon membership has been growing so fast, up to its current estimated ten million here and abroad.

Early in my visit, two surprising facts emerged: First, the building, its size so imposing from the outside, has an interior without large cathedral-like spaces, but rather with a series of small rooms used for individual prayer and various rites. Secondly, the temple is closed on Sundays because the community gathers in its meeting house for worship, instruction, and other social events on that day.

Several themes, prominent in the faith of the Latter-Day Saints, find expression in the temple’s physical structure. The baptistry looms large,  with its font resting on the backs of twelve sculptured oxen symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. In Mormon practice, baptism is performed “in behalf of those who have died.” It is a way of giving the dead an opportunity to accept the gospel.

The other rite important to the temple is Sealing, the uniting of partners in marriage. This takes place in the Sealing Room, an area where bride and groom are wedded not simply for their life on earth, but also for eternity. Children issuing from such a marriage “are sealed to parents, creating eternal families.”

Immediately inside the front door is the Waiting Area. There the credentials of arrivers will be checked to verify that they are Latter-Day Saints in good standing. After proceeding from this area, they change into all-white clothing that signifies two realities: 1) they are putting aside the cares of the world; and 2) economic or social distinctions among them mean nothing.

Everything in the temple leads up to the Celestial Room. This brightest of the spaces in the building is also the tallest, rising two-and-a-half stories. Twelve chandeliers hang from the ceiling and slender stained-glass windows cast their own light. Mormons who enter this room are to experience a foretaste of heaven with its peace and happiness.

Like all good experiences of other people’s faith, this visit gave me some insight into a different spirituality and another perspective on my own. To the hospitality of the Latter-Day Saints, I owe another step forward in my ongoing appreciation of people whose faith differs from my own.

I admire the devotion of Mormon friends, their zeal for their beliefs, and the personal care they show for one another. This latter quality of the community impresses me deeply because it ranks as one of the most precious of spiritual qualities and the one by which most religious traditions say they want to be judged.

Richard Griffin

When I was young, I did not know that Jesus was a Jew. In fact, well into my adult years, I did not realize this basic fact about him. This ignorance lasted despite a religious education that was long and detailed. As far as I can remember, none of my teachers made explicit the ethnic origins of the central figure in my Christian faith.

Probably I considered Jesus to have been a Catholic, the first person to bear that title. After all, he was the founder of the Church and the one who chose apostles to carry on his mission. That all of these men were themselves Jewish was also a fact not present to my naïve awareness.

It was only with the arrival of the Second Vatican Council in 1963 that I began to think differently about the origins of my Christian tradition. In particular, the Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, published two years later, helped me better appreciate my religious roots. That document refers to “the son of the Virgin Mary” and states that “from the Jewish people sprang the apostles, her foundation stones and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ to the world.”

At a remove of 35 years, this message seems obvious now and its language already old fashioned, but for Catholics like me it came as a memorable breakthrough. Among other things, it established a new way for us to think about who Jesus was and who are the people from which he came.

But now, by this stage of my life, I have come to appreciate the Jewishness of Jesus. It has become a fact that I wish to learn more about. Far from detracting from the value of my own religious tradition, this knowledge has added to its richness. I find it stimulating to reflect on these origins and welcome what Jewish scholars have to say about this subject.

This brief account of personal history has been prompted by a statement issued by people calling themselves an interdenominational group of Jewish scholars and published on a full page of the New York Times on Sunday, September 10. Entitled “Dabru Emet” (Hebrew for “Speak the Truth”), it was written by professors at the Universities of Chicago, Toronto, Virginia, and Notre Dame and endorsed by more than 150 other academics and rabbis.

This path-breaking document is intended as a thoughtful response to efforts by official Catholic and Protestant church groups to express regret and repentance for Christian mistreatment of Jews and Judaism.

I find it to be a fine piece of work, bold in its expression of religious principles and generous toward Christians. In that spirit, the authors say  “we believe it is time for Jews to learn about the efforts of Christians to honor Judaism.”  They then go on to make eight brief statements “about how Jews and Christians may relate to one another.”

Rather than attempt to summarize here the whole text, I urge interested readers to look for it themselves, either in the New York Times edition mentioned above or at the Internet site www.beliefnet.com.  Let me instead simply list the main headings of the eight paragraphs and draw your attention to two of the paragraphs that I find most striking.

1. Jews and Christians worship the same God.
2. Jews and Christians seek authority from the same book – the Bible.
3. Christians can respect the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel.
4. Jews and Christians accept the moral principles of Torah.
5. Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon.
6. The humanly irreconcilable difference between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the whole world as promised in Scripture.
7. A new relationship between Jews and Christians will not weaken Jewish practice.
8. Jews and Christians must work together for justice and peace.

The fifth statement, the one about Christians and Nazism impressed me for its assertion that despite the involvement of too many Christians in Nazi atrocities against Jews, “Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity.” In view of the sorry history of widespread acceptance of Nazi ideology and practice among Christians, this amounts to a crucial distinction and one that makes it possible for Jews to respect Christianity as a faith.

The sixth paragraph also strikes me as a model for mutual respect. It calls upon each faith community to be faithful to its own tradition, not claiming  the more accurate interpretation of Scripture nor seeking to exercise political power over the other community. “Jews can respect Christians’ faithfulness to their revelation just as we expect Christians to respect our faithfulness to our revelation.”

I feel grateful for having lived long enough to see these bold, yet reconciling affirmations from leaders who share kinship with Jesus, the person who lived and died as a Jew.

Richard Griffin