The Bad News

Most of the 300,000 Japanese of Sao Paulo, Brazil, refused to believe that the war is over and that their side lost. It was the strange mission of tall, spare Father Hugo Lassalle, S.J., to convince them.

This summer, on his way from Rome back to Japan, Father Lassalle stopped off for two months in Brazil. A priest who had actually been in Japan during the war, and had been an eyewitness of Hiroshima (TIME, Feb. 11, 1946), should be able to straighten things out.

Last week, in Manhattan, 49-year-old German Jesuit Lassalle described how he did it. The Japanese in Brazil, he explained, came there originally to farm and fish, make their fortunes and return home. The Jesuits first became interested in them in 1924 as a means toward the tough job of converting Japan.

A Matter of Diplomacy. Father Lassalle found that isolated Brazilian Japanese had been terrorizing "defeatists" among their own people who spread "rumors" of Japan's surrender (TIME, Aug. 26, 1946). Merchants who told the truth were boycotted; at least 14 "rumor spreaders" were said to have been murdered. Even letters from home were denounced as a Yankee trick. Some stubbornly believed that the Emperor of Japan would soon become Emperor of the world. Meanwhile, Sao Paulo swindlers cleaned up selling passage on non-existent ships to new non-existent Japanese colonies.

Father Lassalle began his mission with gingerly diplomacy. In speeches to Brazil's Japanese colonies, he would refer to the presence of U.S. troops in Japan, the civilian need for food & clothing, the fact that Japan still had a future, after all. But after he had finished talking, people would still go away saying to each other, "Well, you see--the Father did not actually say Japan had lost the war."

Finally, at a meeting in the interior, a man rose in the audience to say: "You must tell them absolutely clearly that Japan lost the war with unconditional surrender, by order of the Emperor." Another voice in the audience suggested that it would be dangerous, at which a dignified patriarch rose to announce in a commanding voice: "There is no danger." Father Lassalle told them. Absolute silence followed.

A Matter of Education. "The refusal to believe it is now declining," says Father Lassalle. "Japanese education is responsible for the tragedy. It is not at the bottom bad will, or even pride, but narrow-mindedness and naivete. That is the mistake of the Japanese people. Once they understand what is going on in the world at large they' are wonderful people, but they were not educated to pay attention to any events outside their own country. . . . They only learned about their own island, and they carry their island with them.

"These people in Brazil are our best reason for conversions in Japan. The people in Japan once thought and felt the same. They have now been humiliated, crushed, and had their eyes opened, and the chance for Christian missions in Japan is several hundred percent of what it was before the war."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.