This Is a Complete Transcript of the Oral History Interview Donald Arthur Cook (CN 259, T1) for the Billy Graham Center Archives

This is a complete transcript of the oral history interview Donald Arthur Cook (CN 259, T1) for the Billy Graham Center Archives. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case [unclear] was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as “ah” or “um” are usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English.

. . . Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker.

. . . . Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.

( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.

[ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.

This transcript was created by Bob Shuster and Kou Xiong and was completed in September 2016.

Please note: This oral history interview expresses the personal memories and opinions of the interviewee and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Billy Graham Center Archives or Wheaton College.

Collection 259, Tape 1. Oral history interview with Donald Arthur Cook by Jennifer Abe on November 15, 1983.

ABE: This is a interview with Donald Arthur Cook by Jennifer Abe for the Missionary Sources Collection at Wheaton College. This interview took place at the library at the Billy Graham Center on November 15th, 1983 at 7:30 P.M. Now we=ll begin. First, just a little bit about your family background, how many brothers and sisters do you have?

COOK: I have two brothers and one sister.

ABE: And what kinds of things are they interested and occupied with right now?

COOK: My sister is living alone. Her...her husband passed away and her son is not home so she is just living as a sort of a semi-retired person trying to make a living.

ABE: Where does she live?

COOK: She lives in Wauconda, Illinois.

ABE: And what about your two brothers?

COOK: My brother just two years younger than I, is in San Diego, California. He is a Ph.D. in engineering and he is a partner in a firm called Management Analysis Consultants and their specialty is helping corporations to analyze their own management and seeking solutions to problems.

ABE: And has he been in this sort of business all his life now?

COOK: He came first of all he was in nuclear engineering and then from that he got into the management consulting angle in the company for which he worked into partnership with others in his own business.

ABE: What is his name?

COOK: Howard.

ABE: And your sister=s name?

COOK: My sister=s name is Margery.

ABE: And your younger brother?

COOK: My youngest brother Ken is a missionary with Conservative Baptists in Argentina, and has been there since about 1962.

ABE: And which mission board is he with?

COOK: Conservative Baptist Foreign Missions Society.

ABE: Oh, right. How did you become a Christian?

COOK: I grew up in a Christian home, so all my…I=ve been influenced to Christian things. My earliest memory of Christian things outside the home are going to church, a Baptist church in Downers Grove [in Illinois] where we lived. And then we moved to Lisle, which is not far from here either and I made my own decision to the Lord at about age thirteen there and then as a young person grew up in the Lisle Bible Church and.... I=ve forgotten the original question.

ABE: [laughs] Okay. How have your parents influence your life?

COOK: My parents were members of the Friends church [Society of Friends, also known as Quakers] and both their families (the Cook and the Barnett families) grew up in a very strong Friends community in western Iowa. So they both were Christians and although some of the things we think of (daily devotions and so forth) weren=t practiced in our home and such yet, there was always a Christian atmosphere and we kids were always conscience that they did know and love the Lord, and that...that influence was...it made it very natural for us to go to Sunday school and church and be involved in Christian things just part of our...part of our life. So their influence was very strong.

ABE: And what does your father do for a living?

COOK: My father started out as a farmer and went broke as a farmer, and then he got a job working for the post office in Iowa and came to Chicago and worked most of his life in as...the post office in Downers Grove.

ABE: I see. About your education, why did you choose to come to Wheaton?

COOK: Well one reason of course was that we were so near to Wheaton and very strongly influence by the college itself. Our pastor was a student of Wheaton College, and as a young person, we were all exposed to students from the college and the influence of the college. Gospel teams [from Wheaton College] came to our church frequently and so forth, and I...then when I was ready to go to college, I thought this was the place where I would like to go because of the Christian background.

ABE: And which church was this?

COOK: Lisle Bible Church.

ABE: Lisle Bible. When you got here, what kinds of activities did you become involve with?

COOK: Well I commuted, I lived at home and commuted and I really didn=t get involve as much

© 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 259, T1 Transcript - Page 4 in college activities, as I=m looking back I wish I had. I don=t really recall belonging to any of the...I didn=t belong to any of.... I forget what you called them, the groups that meet on Friday evenings. I forgot what they=re called [the literary societies]. But anyway, that later on I lived on campus and I still wasn=t really involved in most of the activities at the college. I was still involved in the youth work in our own church, which was nearby. So, can=t say I was really involve too much in...outside of class activities at the college.

ABE: Right. So you were involved...you were interested in youth work though?

COOK: Yes, uh-uh.

ABE: Yes. Okay. I know that you had a time in the [military] service, and after you returned from the service, you enrolled at the college again?

COOK: Yes, I came back to the college. In fact I was still on terminal leave when I started, when the fall term started in 1946, and so I almost went back into college when I came home for the service.

ABE: And how did your time in the service affect your priorities and interest when you returned to Wheaton?

COOK: For me, my time in the service as a Christian was a very important time, it was a time when I learned to read my Bible and...and to know my Bible personally. It really meant something to me. I took a couple of correspondence courses from Moody Bible Institute while I was in the service and that helped. But...and a few experiences not...I was never in the foxhole so I didn=t have that kind of experiences but there were times of stress in those times I came to I think much closer to the Lord, to realization, to the promises of scripture. And I think it also help me to [pauses] think out of myself what are the important things in life, to realize that making money for one thing that is not the greatest thing in life but to be of service to the Lord and to be of as much as possible some influence for him, to be a far more important thing. I had no thoughts that being a full time Christian worker, but I think that the service was a very important time from that view point, and it=s also being overseas. For the first time came face to face with a mission field, or with several mission fields in fact, and I=m very sure that had a large part to do with my desire to go to the mission field as a missionary.

ABE: Were you attracted to a certain people at this time or...?

COOK: I think the strongest attraction....I visited the Philippines and Japan and somewhat briefly China, Shanghai. But I think the strongest influence of all was in China. Just although I only spent really a total of maybe three to four days there. That would have been the place that I felt the strongest call to.

ABE: What did you see that influence you so much?

COOK: Well, when you go overseas as a young person, I think you=re a little...perhaps naive and

© 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 259, T1 Transcript - Page 5 you see things that later on you think or realize where maybe you didn=t really see the real picture. That was right in the end of the war, and poverty was one thing that impress me, and the needs for the people. They looked like a needy people. I later came to realize that some of the things that I saw were not so much a matter of poverty but just a matter of normal daily life in a different standard of living and so forth. But I was impress by those things and the outward needs of the people that are also feeling that there was a inward need as well.

ABE: How did you serve while you were...during the war, what did you do.

COOK: I was in the Air Force, I was a navigator in the air force, and a year and a half in the pacific area.

ABE: And what years were those?

COOK: Those were, I was in the service from nineteen....I left Wheaton in March of 1943 and returned to this country in the first of August in 1946. I was overseas from February of 1945 until August or July, >46.

ABE: How old were you when you returned to Wheaton?

COOK: I was twenty-three when I came back.

ABE: When you returned, how did you see that World War II affected the campus here?

COOK: The main thing that I think of along the line is the fact that there was so many other fellows who also been in the service, and of course having been in Asia, I was interested in Asiatic thing from that point on and found especially through fellows who had been touch by the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade, areal interest in Asia and I associated with them. In fact, when you ask about activities I guess I spent more time with them in their activities, doing things for the mission, stuffing letters and that sort of thing than any other activity on campus. But I got to know a number of fellows who I have been in the service either in the Philippines or in Japan and saw their concern for people in Asiatic countries who did not really have the opportunity to know the Lord. And so these fellows like myself who have been there but who really taught me as far as concern and consciousness of need on the field and of how to do something about it was a concerned. That was my strongest impression of the result of World War II on campus.

ABE: Was there any feeling on campus on Japan in particular being the enemy instead of this concern? Or was it mostly this concern?

COOK: No I don=t, I don=t remember anything of that thought on Japan as the enemy, I don=t think...as I recall I don=t think any of us really had thought of it that way at that time. Maybe we would have a couple of years later, but not then.

ABE: Were there any activities on campus that would specifically help the war effort like you mentioned stuffing envelopes for the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade? But were there other activities

that supported the war?

COOK: Well at that time of course the war was over when I came back. But I was here, I went into the service from here and I was a freshman at the time, and at that time we had a...sort of a...like a ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corp] unit. It wasn=t really ROTC but it was something that was voluntary that the college itself put together as I recall, which was similar, it was sort of like easing military training, and I think we met once a week as I recall or maybe it wasn=t quite that often. Maybe it was once every other week for that training did sort of military kinds of things, hiding in the bushes [laughs] to attack one another and so on.

ABE: What people at Wheaton had been a impact on your life?

COOK: Well, I mentioned our pastor who was then teaching at Wheaton, I didn=t have him as a teacher here, but of course I knew him very well. He was a only a few years ahead of me, maybe five or something like that. And there was another young man here by the name of Glen Barker, who is now Dr. Glen Barker, and I think he=s at one of those Fuller schools [Fuller Theological Seminary] in the Los Angeles areas, Pasadena. He came to our church as a youth leader, youth director. And while with him two other fellows. One was Dick Cockran, and the other was Pete McKnight. They were somewhere around the class of >43 or >44 or something like that, all of them. And Glen especially, Glen Barker had a very strong influence on me and on the others in our church, young people in our church. He was a excellent leader, a good Bible teacher, and we all enjoyed having him and his spiritual influence on us was good, he was just a...he was able to get across the Word of God without making you feel like you were sitting and having a lesson or something like that. So those are the ones that I think of mostly here of course there are a number of others that who were leaders. Billy Graham was here when I was a freshman, he was a senior and I didn=t know much about Billy Graham in those days, but I was very impress with him as a leader on campus. And there are other people here I did know [pauses] (the football field [on Wheaton campus] named after him)

ABE: McCully?

COOK: McCully, yes I knew [Ed] McCully and Jim Elliot was here, and Jim Elliot of course was a leader and Dave Howard were leaders, and they were both interested in missions and so that was of interest of me.

ABE: What were your impressions of them?

COOK: Jim Elliot was a very [pauses]...well, I don=t want to say it that way either), he was very serious about being a Christian, and his dedication I think was very impressive to me, even though I didn=t really know him well personally. McCully - I didn=t really think of him as being a missionary. He was in my classes and he was always full of energy and full of fun...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: ...and so forth, but he was...he knew how to handle himself, I was impressed with him in

that but also I should mention one of my house maids. I lived at Dr. Cooks house (no relative). But...Glen Peterson was one of the fellows that lived there and he was really a outstanding person. He was a good athlete. I think he was a state champion shot-putter, well, that year if I=m not mistaken, his senior year)). An outstanding athlete but such a humble person, one who [pauses] you knew he really loved the Lord, but he was such a kind and a good fellow you just enjoyed knowing him.

ABE: What was the social atmosphere like in Wheaton at that time?

COOK: In what sense do you mean social?

ABE: Was there a lot of dating on campus?

COOK: Yea, I think there was. There was a lot of dating on campus. The.... I can=t think of a word, the societies that were here...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: ...what were they?) I don=t know if they still have them here now or not, they were sort of the core of the social life as I recall it. As I said I do belong to them and I was...on the weekends was involved with the young peoples who were, so I didn=t really get very deeply involved in the social life but there was a lot of dating and I know that some were serious dating, so to speak, but a lot was just getting to know people and so forth. I thought it was a pretty good situation all the way around.

ABE: What was the flying club like?

COOK: The flying club was...was small, there were only like maybe a dozen or so. And I guess they were just a people from different phases of life who were interested in flying. One or two of them had been in the service as I recall like I had. Because I was in the Air Force, I had a interest in flying but I was not a pilot, but I wanted to see what I could do and we went once a week to...to have flying lessons. And I guess there were probably some who already had their licenses. I can=t quite recall. Also one of the member of the club was a professor.... I reached a point where I forget names). [Pauses]

ABE: Was it Mr. Volle? Art Volle?

COOK: No...Dr. Paul...(the science teacher)...slips my mind [perhaps Paul Martin or Paul Wright]. But it was fun, it was interesting and for those who really had a use for flying in the future was a good experience. So I don=t know, some may have gone into MAF [Mission Aviation Fellowship] later on but I=m not sure. I didn=t because, one: it got too expensive and it was taking time, and I was...felt I needed to spend otherwise, and I also felt that I was never going to be mechanically minded enough to be a good pilot, and so I didn=t go on with it. We flew from what is now DuPage County Airport part of the time, and then from what was Mitchell Field and from Woodale airport, those three different places at different times.

ABE: [pauses] After Wheaton...well first of all, what year did you graduate?

COOK: I graduate in January 15th.

ABE: And what was your major?

COOK: At that point it was sociology. I done a business major but during in my junior year, I felt that what I wanted to go into training for full time ministry and they recommended changing to sociology as preparation for a seminary course later.

ABE: Now why did you change in the middle...I mean, what prompted your interest in missions in your junior year?

COOK: Well it wasn=t clearly an interest in missions that year. Missions was always there in the background, but that summer as a business major, the...they had a...the business department arranged for those, for several who wanted summer work that would be related to the business course and so I worked for United Airlines at the what was then Chicago=s airport (Midway).

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: I think it was the experience of getting into the working wheel...working world and based on my thoughts and experiences in the service and as a Christian in those couple years before that back at Wheaton and home, through our home church. I just...felt that the working world did not offer me what I wanted as a Christian, and that I wanted to spend my time serving the Lord somehow. I didn=t know how at that point, but I felt the best step to take was seminary since I didn=t take a Bible course at Wheaton and I felt that I needed training.

ABE: Bible wasn=t required?

COOK: Yes, but just a few required courses. It wasn=t enough I felt what I had wasn=t enough and I wanted to take a seminary course to supply what I felt lacking.

ABE: So did you go to seminary?

COOK: Yes, I went to seminary. After Wheaton I went to Faith Theological Seminary, which was then in Bloomington, Delaware and later Philadelphia.

ABE: What year did you moved there?

COOK: I went from right from here in January about 1950 and was there until May (I guess it was) in 1953. It was a three year course, which I took three and a half years to do.

ABE: When did you meet your wife?

COOK: Well, my wife was from my hometown (from Lisle) and I had known her family since

school days there, but I got to know her as an adult during in my last year or two here at Wheaton. She had been going into another church, which was a very liberal church and through our young people=s group. Contacts our young people=s group. At our church she came there and almost immediately accepted the Lord as her savior. And then of course she was in the young people=s group too, so that=s where we got acquainted as adults.

ABE: Her name?

COOK: Her name was Dorothy True.

ABE: Going back to your education, how do you feel that your education contributed to your work as a missionary later on? Did it help?

COOK: Well it did. Very often when we go to the mission field you don=t end up doing what you think you’re going to do, and my second year after language school I was asked to become the what we call a field secretary, which is treasurer and business manager and what had you on that line and so forth. I spent my entire time on the field following that in business and administrative work. As I said, started here at Wheaton as a business major and so what I learned as a business major helped prepare me for that. It was bookk eeping, which I was not really an expert at which I enjoyed but called me to be drafted into this on the field. And as I said that=s where I stayed, it was supposed to have been a one year assignment, but it turned out to be the rest of the time until we came home.

ABE: If you could have done anything differently to better prepare yourself, what would you have done?

COOK: Well I think for one thing, I would have become a little more involved in activities at Wheaton. I think that was one thing I missed out on. I value very much the time in my home church in young people=s work, and that was very important I think. But I think I could have become a little more involved here and that would have helped. I never really been a outgoing type of person. I think that would have maybe had helped to release some of the strings that I=ve held along that line...I=m not sure what I would have done. Sometimes I look back I think Awell, I could have shorten my time much better if I just been a Bible major at Wheaton College and I wouldn=t have to go to seminary as so forth. But I don=t really know, as I say, having ended up as the administrative work on the mission field certainly that the time that I had here in the business...as a business major was helpful there and it fill the need, it filled the position that someone might have had to fill. Perhaps was better trained for other work on the mission field...I don=t really know what else I can say along that line.

ABE: Did you ever have any contact with youth or youth ministries while you were in Japan on the mission field?

COOK: Our main contact while in administrative work was with college students. In...inn Japan, wherever there was a English speaking person near a college or university, you can be sure that the student will discover that and they commonly went to converse in English, and so you a...just

a perfect kind of contact in that way, and so we were always involved in the English classes, or even English Bible classes with young people.

ABE: Right. Okay. Why did you chose to go to Japan with OMF [Overseas Missionary Fellowship]?

COOK: Well, I think Wheaton was...had a great deal to do with that. When I was here of course Dr. Edman was president and the first knowledge that I had of OMF (which of course would have been China Inland Mission)...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: ...was hearing the illustrations of Dr. Edman use so much of the time in his messages from the life of Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission, and that stirred my interest and I read the life of Hudson Taylor (that was two to three volumes) and that stirred my interest more in China Inland Mission, and then I met various people from China Inland Mission. Actually, the general director Bishop [Frank] Houghton was here one time as a speaker. Although I didn=t meet him in personally, that was of interest to me, and then later in seminary I met in person, several who were missionaries with...with OMF and all of those contacts plus the magazine - Asia=s Millions or China=s Millions, whichever it was. China=s Millions called it was. It became Asia=s Millions [the magazine then called East Asia=s Million] when the mission was forced out of China. That and then the....I appreciate the principles of Overseas Missionary Fellowship as well (the old China Inland Mission). The emphasis on prayer and faith, not because I was a man of faith or prayer in particular but to me this was really the core of Christian life, trusting the Lord, and the emphasis on that I thought was very important and I=m sure all missions...most missions have a similar interest but that...I guess OMF=s attitude in particular was of interest and drew me.

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: ...

ABE: Do you know year China Inland Mission was forced out of China?

COOK: There=s about...well, by 1951, eventually all the missionaries were out. I think they started coming out in >50, although I don=t have that clear in my mind, not having been there. I should know because I heard so much from the missionaries who were in China. But it was either late >49, but I think it was >50 when they came out. The takeover in China was in 1949 and for a time there was the tolerance by the Chinese Communist government on missionaries, and then of course as it grew little by little it became evident that there was going to be un-satisfactory situation for the Chinese Christians, so I think it really was >50 when we started leaving and by >51 most of them were out except for just a very few who were almost prisoners in their own home or somewhat they were prevented from leaving China, so basically there=s like >50, >51 that they came out.

ABE: If China had been left open, would you have chosen to go to China? Was that where your

heart was?

COOK: I think I probably would.

ABE: And how did it come about that you went to Japan?

COOK: Well again, I was visiting Japan in the service. Somehow it just attracted me similarly to the way I was attracted in China, but maybe not as quite strongly but next to China in the same way. Of course, the situation, as I said earlier, you see the things around you and as a young person it died away from your knowledge or lack of experience or whatever, but of course Tokyo was in ruins in those days and the people were just struggling to make ends meet and so forth. And I was impress by the masses of people and already [pauses] hearing that there were opportunities. Of course, General MacArthur had said that what Japan needed was...was missionaries, but I was attracted by...by what seemed to be the needs of the people in Japan as I was in China, although China would have been the first...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: ...first call for me.

ABE: How did your wife feel?

COOK: Well my wife has.... She hadn=t been a Christian very long. We were married in 1950 and she been a Christian about two years by that time, but she learned very rapidly. She was hungry for the Lord before she met him as savior, and so she learned very rapidly and as she took a very active part on our young people group in reaching out to others, and I think the...the...the desire to serve the Lord in that way was built up during those first two years and she was ready to go with me.

ABE: What was OMF=s basic strategy for reaching the people who are in Japan?

COOK: Well of course the China Inland Mission was concerned with reaching the people who have not been reached because in its founding there was an area along the coast that had been reached by missionaries, but they were all concentrated in the cities along the coast. And Hudson Taylor=s vision was to go inland where missionaries had not gone, and this was really the basic idea that was held by OMF (when it became OMF having come out of China) to go where missionaries had not gone. So in Japan at that time, there was it was northern Japan and the island known as Hokkaido that were the most unreached, most obviously unreached, and so the thought was to go there in particular as in China to reach the areas away from the mainstream. So they went from for instance in Hokkaido to towns along the southern sea coast, and there was a mountain resort town that they went to and two coal mining areas where there was no resident missionaries at that time. Basically that was what they felt was the strategy to use interesting enough since that time (Japan particular) that strategy been reversed and now since all ten, twelve years back now. The main thrust has been in the large cities because of largely the advice those who had become Christians, the Japanese would become Christians and first they say...they=ve

told us that the feuding of the Japanese is that if you come to an area or a big city or another country area from a country town, you=re nobody. But if you come from a city, a large city and you have work there and had been an influence there when you go to a country area or a relatively, unpopulated , less populated area, then you=re important, and you have a better opportunity to get a hearing. So the strategy (you didn=t ask me this question), the strategy has become just the reverse, to reach the city areas that where....we=ve been home for ten years now, where at the time we left in the city of Sapporo for instance there was about three or four groups that OMF had begun, and that number has tripled or even possibly more than tripled over the past few years, and it does seem to be a more effective strategy because the outreach from then has been greater as far as reaching other areas is concerned too. So our Japanese Christians insight was a very important factor even through we didn=t realize it for twenty years.

ABE: So you were in the city. What kinds of things would you do to attract the Japanese to give you a hearing?

COOK: We were there of course in the early years we arrive there just say a couple years after the first missionaries who studied the language were able to begin to do work and while we were there at the....the emphasis was on (in the summer time) tent evangelism, setting up a tent in a busy area where it could be seen, or where it would not be related necessarily to a foreigners home or church so called, and this was a means of attracting people and usually for tent camp meetings was filled. Especially with the children=s meetings that tents would be just packed out, and for adult meetings too. Most of the time the tent was filled, then tracting on the street was another means of...of making contacts of people and getting a hearing, sometimes hospital work. One thing that never developed very much but which was one of our members in particular was interested in was factory work, trying to make contacts in factories and having opportunity when regularly to meet with people there. Then in…in more recent years, the tent meetings haven=t been as popular, so they have turned from perhaps strictly evangelistic meetings to other ideas such as, oh, a exhibition type of thing to draw people into to interest them in things that they might see posters and whatever, and this was being done just about the time we left Japan ten years ago, and I=m not quite sure how well that=s working today.

ABE: Why do you think the tent meetings [unclear]?

COOK: I=m not sure but...possibly because of a little more sophistication in Japanese life...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK:... in more recent years. I was there about ten years after the war had ended, and of course things were very different from what they were after the war but there still a period when Japan was getting back on its feet. Now of course, Japan had survived as far as the world is concerned, and that gaining of sophistication...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: …being something to do with it. The emphasis on things that are a little more flashy

today, whereas a tent could be a kind of a drab thing. That may have something to do with it. I=m not quite sure.

ABE: Did you see a rise of materialism there?

COOK: I think so, definitely...Well I=m not sure if you call this materialism. In Hokkaido for instance, which is probably more different from the rest of Japan than any other single part is, because of the extreme...extremes of winter, which are not really any worse than Wheaton [laughs]. They had to learn to build different kinds of houses and in Hokkaido actually, for the first time in Japan I saw houses that were not the old traditional...just bare wooden walls that were, that we would call stucco buildings with a little insulation in them at least because of the cold weather. They were changing from the old to the sort of thing during in the time we were there. But of course, cars would become more numerous and television just has flood the country and with prosperity of the country, the stores and department stores are filled with things and it’s just all there, and of course its business and so forth, and some things makes for prosperity, and you can buy things and you can become a little more materialistic than before.

ABE: How do you see any change of the basic character of the Japanese through this rising prosperity?

COOK: [Pauses] Well I don=t know, its kind of hard to say. I like to go back. As I say,its been ten years since we were in Japan. I would like to go back today, I=ll be very different I=m sure from when we had (during the time when we were there). I=m sure [pauses] that the Japanese are more confident today than they were before. Of course wherever you go, whatever country you’re in there are people who feel that they are all somewhat downtrodden or not as well off as other people are. I think there was much more of that feeling when we first went there in 1956 in the first few years then in later years. I don=t really know that, other than the confidence that the nations has gain and the people within the nation had gained as a result through the economic success that they=ve had, and the train success...I don=t really know if there=s that much change in the character of the Japanese.

ABE: When you started your outreach in Japan, how big was this...how big was OMF, their work in Japan at the time?

COOK: Well when we arrived there, there were something like, I guess about forty to forty-five missionaries there. As far as now there are about eighty, so as far as numbers are concerned there is a great increase. It was really a beginning work when we arrived, missionaries have been off two to three years maybe. But most of them were very new to the language and so forth, and they were working in (as I said) mostly in small towns, and the result was a very slow progress as far as development of churches are concerned...sorry can I ask the question again?

ABE: What was the size of their outreach when you started?

COOK: So we were reaching then we were in a couple of cities. Sapporo we had one source of outreach there. In Aomori City we had...we had no real work in Aomori City, we had people who

were living there but they were not engaged in evangelistic work or church work in particular, and we were in some smaller cities like 50,000 or 100,000, two or three of them, and...but the churches were all very small [pauses]. It was really just a beginning work, a seed-sowing work, and as far as Christian leadership from the Japanese was concerned, really it belonged most number of them on the fingers in both hands in those days. One of the problems was in northern Japan, giving Japanese Christian workers (pastors and so forth) and of course you always when you begin to work and you see a convert growing in the Lord and realize that this person could become a pastor or Christian worker. There are hopes with what we are seeing in them was that they were going down south for their training through Honshu (Tokyo area) and so on, but they didn=t come back. So that was very discouraging. So, we...there were maybe at the time we went out from language school. We probably couldn=t stay there with more than a half a dozen churches in any of those there were probably no more than so half a dozen to maybe ten Christians who were in the category. We could think of them as ongoing leaders and so forth.

ABE: Would you spell the two cities? They were both in Hokkaido?

COOK: No, Sapporo is in Hokkaido.

ABE: Okay.

COOK: You want me to spell it: S A P P O R O. Sapporo. And our headquarters under some...the northern tip of the main island of Honshu, that was Aomori City, that=s spelled A O M O R I

ABE: Okay.

COOK: Those were two big cities where we were.

ABE: And your headquarters were...

COOK: It was Aomori then, but not anymore. It=s in Sapporo now.

ABE: Okay. Going to your very first time when you arrived in Japan, what were your very first impressions?

COOK: Okay...well, very first impression we had been in Singapore, which is our international headquarters and for orientation period and of preliminary language study period, and we arrived in Japan from Singapore in January.

ABE: Of what year?

COOK: Of 1957 it was. And January is no time to arrive in northern Japan from Singapore [laughs], because we arrive with six foot snow on...six feet deep on the level in Aomori City, which was where our language centers was then. So the contrast of winter from summer or anything other than winter was very evident. As far as the, I=m thinking out of Tokyo but on

northern Japan just where our work was. Outwardly it would look to most foreigners, I think it is into us as, really as rather poor. Partly because we=re not use to the Japanese way of life, way of doing buildings as I said before. They were just plain unpainted wood buildings, and then the shopping area, so many of them were storefronts right on the sidewalk and opened even in the wintertime and so on. For we who were not use to Asian life, it seemed rather economically poor situation, and we almost wondered how people could keep warm in houses like that, which was soon found out that there were coal burning stoves, wood burning stoves, and that not all Japanese lived just with charcoal fires in the middle of the flooring. They do in northern Japan use stove to keep warm with. The people are very...very busy, very industric...industrious, and.... Although again as a foreigner you don=t really understand but obviously with goals in their lives many of them of course were like we here just trying to make a living and trying to improve themselves. When we were in language school there, we went to attend a church which was founded by TEAM [the Evangelical Mission Association], and were very warmly welcomed by the Christians there, so we began to know Japanese as individuals a little bit. They were very friendly to us. We of course learned problems and again there just like our problems here. A person has health problems, another person has economic problems, someone is weak in the faith and someone is very strong in the faith and so on. Some of them were very impressive as Christians and were really devoted to the Lord. There was a young man who was the closest thing to a pastor that that church had. He has been through Bible school somewhere (I=m not sure where). He had a speech impediment, and yet he, when his turn came, was the speaker on Sundays, and he worked very hard at it, and he obviously loved the Lord and he may not have been the best personal worker or gotten his message across the best of all, but he (as I said) worked very hard at it because he wanted to...to serve the Lord. So we were impress then with the fact that wherever you go the Lord touches people and he uses them and when we went.... This was only a year later, this doesn=t seem like a very great time now looking back when we went out of language school.

ABE: What year was this?

COOK: This was in January 1958. We left language school. We had just the one year there, and we were very, very poorly prepared language wise and the main point of leading the language was to get out and look where we could use the language, study the language. But we had to go to these small towns on the south coast of Hokkaido where there was a work started but there was no missionaries going all over, so they sent us just to kind of hold the ropes for a time until someone else could come and that was really all we were able to do because we couldn=t really use the language particularly for preaching if you get by as far as personal reason of concern. But there we met a small group of Christians, and...were I think especially touch by the way that the Lord had reached them as individuals and had worked in their lives again. There were some who were weaker, some who were stronger, some who lack the Bible knowledge and so on. We were very impressed with the fact that the Lord can save individuals wherever they are and prepare them to do the work. Again we were impress there with the friendliness of the people whose town of 6000 people...

ABE: What was the name of the town?

COOK: Tomikawa, T.O.M.I.K.A.W.A. It means (if you take the word apart), it means Awealthy

river@. Tomikawa. We were the only foreigners in town that is in the Caucasians in town, and people were curious but they didn=t (what was I going to say...) They didn=t harass us or any such thing either out of friendship or any other way but they sort of stayed their distance until the opportunity came to get acquainted in a natural way. I think that probably for us was our best opportunity to look into Japanese life because after that we were in administrative work and then we were as closely in touch with the people. But...we saw the same things there, hard-working people, and the same needs as elsewhere, and although there=s always you have to say....well if you think of a American city (their town of 6000 people), was a very meager response to the Gospel (only a half dozen) during the time we were there we were Christians. But it was a half a dozen anywhere. (If that answers the question).

ABE: Okay, so what year did you start your administrative work then?

COOK: That was in the fall of 1959.

ABE: Were you transferred then?

COOK: Yes, we went to Tokyo. It was still a....there was two reasons for being in Tokyo. One was that in China, the China Inland Mission had always needed to have someone in a populated place where things could get done, and necessary items could be obtained and this was build into the thinking of OMF. Most of the people having come from China. And another thing was of course it was ten years after the war but Japan still was not on its feet and there was a need for somebody to be in a city like Tokyo to take care of the business needs, transportation needs, and so forth and to a lesser degree to make purchases that were needed for people from another area especially anything that they wanted that they might have come from overseas because those things were just not attainable in cities other than like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and so on.

ABE: Do you feel like the methods that were used in China were adequate to the transfer to Japan?

COOK: Some were and some weren=t. That what was I just saying of course that was temporary and that changed in a few years’ time, and of course part to what is unique in Japan as a mission field is the fact that it is like a western country, so if individuals felt the need for western items and so forth, it wasn=t too long for those who were available in Japan till after...five years or so after we arrived there. But that=s...as far as that part is concern I think some of the methods of working are the same anywhere. We had one man who spent twenty five years in China and who was in his late fifties when he went to Japan to learn the language, and of course you never really learn the language that well, but he used what he learned and his particular ministry he felt it was a house to house visitation and so he spent a great deal of time just going from one house to another just to leave a track and to say hello and if they led to something else then they would take a little longer, and he always said that if they made a good contact then he turned it over to his wife because she was a much better worker than he was [laughs] and his wife made the next visit.

ABE: What was his name?

COOK: His name was Fisher, Hubert Fisher; he=s a Canadian [an object hit the table in the background].

ABE: What were some of the cultural influences you had to consider when you presented the Gospel?

COOK: I guess the main thing would be the....this is probably a language factor but it is also cultural that the fact that the concepts that we have in English or in America differ from what the Japanese have for instance the idea of salvation is hard to get across because it doesn=t really mean the same thing to them than it does to us. The various terms that you think of that come natural to you don=t mean the same thing to the Japanese that they do to you in trying to deal with them you have to learn first of all how to get around those problems in order to speak to them. Other things that are more clearly cultural...I have to say this but I just saw...I was looking in a reader=s digest today and it said AWhy don=t (I had an article in which I haven=t read yet).@ AWhy don=t we imitate the Japanese or something like that, and I think of what that had made me think of what we=re hearing these days about for instance the Japanese in industry and the way things are handled in the relationship between management and labor and so on, and one of the things that has been mentioned is the fact that the Japanese spend their life with their company and their company provides...it can be the whole world to them. Living quarters and vacations and so forth, whatever they need they can go to a company on vacation in a resort area for their vacation (whatever it is) and various other things that the company does for them. And this is traditional in Japan. This is a part of life there, but now that can be a very, very strong hindrance to reaching people for the Lord because when you do that, you=re taking them away from that relationship with the company, the place where they work and into something that is...something separate from it and that is a problem as well as even the smaller business to not participate in things that they do....There was a Christian that we knew in Sapporo, most of the family members were Christians and after...became a Christian after his wife and his children, but it was very difficult for him so far as his company was concerned it was a store (probably a small business), but he would spend his Sundays with his family in a church in Christian things, where as they would want to be doing other things and they would want him to be involve in the fact that he was not involved with them was a problem to his company. So then comes the strain on the job and so on. And that=s one of the cultural factors that you have to deal with. So, although for a Japanese industry this sort of thing works well. But when you think of that tight relationship it=s a definite hindrance to the Gospel, and then of course along the lines of religion, the...the tightness of the family. It is a similar problem but the ancestral worship and the tie with Shintoism, Buddhism in the home. The godshelf in the home. These are all problems because they are important to a Japanese family and for the individual to become a Christian, and to...in honoring the Lord to avoid those old ties is a real problem. One...I mentioned the town of Tomikawa where we went. There was a deformed girl there who was one of our real leaders, and she was the only Christian in her family. Her mother was not living, so she was the one who kept house and so on. But one of her problems was should she dust the godshelf. To not worship at the godshelf was a bad enough problem but her father wanted her to keep the house in order and so forth and this was one of the problems that she faced.

ABE: Could you elaborate on what the godshelf [also known as kamidana or butsudan]?

COOK: It=s a...Well, you could think of it as a box, I guess, and there=s not necessarily anything of value there, maybe just a picture of a...like this girl=s case or her mother=s picture with her mother and grandparents will be there. And they...the family presents offerings to there regularly, a little rice or whatever, and...I suppose in some homes it would be much more elaborate and ornamental but in an ordinary home would be just a little...a little special place, a box that they think of as being a place where the spirits are and then they present offerings regularly regularly and sometimes when the priest comes he goes through his performance there in front of the godshelf.

ABE: How do most Japanese Christians deal with these kind of issues of ancestral worship and the godshelf and do they renounce them completely or do they compromise and pay respect to them or how do they deal with this?

COOK: Well, I=m sure you=ll find various degrees.... It is a major problem and there are many who...who make a break completely. For instance in...this man that I was mentioning who worked in a small company, since he was a Christian, his wife was a Christian, his children are Christians, and his wife=s parents also live with them until they passed away. In his home there was no problem because it was his home. But for a young person in the home of his parents where this goes on, it is a real problem and there have been many who have been put out of their homes because of it, because they have made a complete break and many do that. Of course if their living away from the home.... Anyway that wouldn=t be a problem other than when they go home, but the other who compromises as well and there are those who want to believe or who want to be Christians and maybe in their hearts have accepted the fct that Jesus is the savior but who never make a break from it. Of course that hinders their life as a Christian and their influence also for the Lord, but [pauses] there are various...various degrees of breaking away.

ABE: Does the acceptance of Christianity seen by the Japanese as a rejection of their culture?

COOK: I don=t know if I thought of that before. I=m sure in some cases it is but I don=t think it necessarily is...you know it=s not universally true. They wouldn=t be so in every case, in many cases.... I think most of the time it=s not but it can be a factor.

ABE: Okay. With all these influ...influence, cultural influences in mind. How did you modify (if at all) the Gospel in order to present it to the people?

COOK: [pauses] That=s something else I haven=t thought of, if we modified. I don=t really feel that we did. The main problem is in language and trying to get around some of the problems that language presents, and sometimes you have to do that by illustrations or by using a lot of words instead of one or two words. I think...I think the main approach that you have to those problems in the home is to show them that Christianity is based on love, the love of the Lord for us and the love that he puts in our hearts that...that while they want to stand with the Lord, they...they clearly need to show their family that they love them still and to maintain that relationship of love for their family members. And that in itself will break down barriers in time.

ABE: How many...how long did it take you to get a good grasp of the language do you think?

COOK: Well, we=re not there yet [laughs]. We aren=t typical because we were in administrative work, and we were away from daily...the kind of daily relationships with the people that you had when they were in church work or...or someone in specialized work like student work, whatever. We...I said we had the one year of language school, we went out to hence a year and half in this town, and that of course was a great help because we didn=t make progress in learning how to talk with people during that time, not much progress in preaching but as it turned out we didn=t need that much [Abe laughs] because we never really got back to preaching as such, and then we...let=s see.... I believe it was ten years later before we head back to language study again, and we had six months in a good language program that time. And...and that was a help but we...we never really, of course we were there for over a period of fifteen, sixteen years and we never in that time really had the kind of grasp that I feel is necessary if your going to be in a teaching/preaching kind...

ABE: Uh-huh.

COOK: …of work, it would have been much better of course if we had been with the people all the time.

ABE: Right.

COOK: But, maybe this would help to answer your question, although it=s not up to us personally with a good language program though I think, in OMF right now by the end of the first term, you should be able to do a good job of preaching and....

END TAPE