HEALING - FAR EAST AND DEEP SOUTH

This invitation raised a storm in the Seinendan's Central Executive, but it was accepted at a special meeting by 85 votes to 65. So, while a handful went to Moscow, 104 set off for Mackinac, along with fifty other Japanese, thirty from the Philippines and twenty from Korea.

Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister of Japan

The Seinendan delegation were the bones and sinews of Japan. They had all shown leadership qualities, but their horizons had been limited to their farms, villages, towns and prefectures. Entwistle, when he arrived in Mackinac some two weeks after them, found them very insecure. 'They were surrounded by strange people, strange language and food, and a very different style of life,' he writes. 'They were also faced with a challenge to take a look at themselves in the light of absolute moral standards and in the perspective of a world struggle of ideas. . . Some plunged into arguments to blunt the moral challenges with which they were confronted. Some retreated into their own world; they left their watches on Tokyo time . . . and tried to eat and sleep according to their home time. . . A number were soon making decisions about their lives, facing such basic problems as stealing, marital infidelity, bribery and hatred, and were experimenting in straightening out what they had done wrong and how to live in the future.'2

Prime Minister Kishi was paying a visit to President Eisenhower at the same moment, and some of the senior Japanese like Niro Hoshijima and Senator Shidzue Kato, with a number of the Seinendan leaders, went from Mackinac to Washington to meet him on his arrival. He spent an hour with them before seeing Eisenhower, and they told him of Buchman's initiative. He regretted that he could not squeeze in a visit to Mackinac but proposed a talk with Buchman on the phone. The hour-long conversation between the two men next morning was amplified so that the thousand people at the assembly could hear. Kishi asked how the young Japanese were doing, to which Buchman replied, 'We are teaching them to go not to the right, nor to the left, but to go straight.' At one point, the Prime Minister said directly to the young Japanese, 'I hope you are fully understanding Moral Re-Armament and will get its spirit into your whole being and take it back to Japan.'3

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Photo: Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister of Japan, maintained close links with Buchman.
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