Bittersweet Benediction

For years, St. Thomas Lutheran Church has been a living monument to the kindness of strangers in another time, another place. Built to honor the deeds of three white people in Minnesota who befriended young Japanese Americans during World War II, it attracted a vibrant, multicultural congregation to its sanctuary in Gardena.

Now the church itself is slipping into history. And its congregation--which has dwindled to about 30 senior citizens--is giving away the $500,000 in proceeds anticipated from its sale. Much of the money will go to causes honoring those who reached out to a minority group during its darkest hours in America.

“This is not a death knell. We feel good about this because we are simply redirecting our ministry” with the donations, said Hayao “Hy” Shishino, whose wartime experiences in Minnesota led to the founding of St. Thomas.

During their final meeting last week on the church property, which is being sold to a Korean Baptist congregation, St. Thomas members shared their memories and talked about some of their choices for disposing of the funds.

They earmarked $150,000 to help build a new Lutheran high school in Torrance--a donation that will be acknowledged tonight during a fund-raising dinner for the campus. They set aside $10,000 for a new church at Lake Havasu that two former congregants are building, gave $20,000 to help a seminary student finish his studies and put $20,000 into missionary work in New Guinea.

But the largest single amount, $200,000, will be used to set up a permanent trust fund to pay for scholarships at Concordia University in Irvine. The Dan and Ann Schoof Endowment is named in memory of an American couple of German ancestry who befriended a young Shishino in 1943.

Then just 18, he had already endured a lot of the fear and prejudice aimed at Japanese Americans during the war. The previous year, just a few weeks shy of graduation from Los Angeles High School, he had been ordered with his family to move to an internment camp. The forced relocations--disrupting lives and taking land and most other possessions--were endured by about 120,000 Japanese Americans.

Shishino was living at a camp in Arizona when he got a job offer in Minnesota that enabled him to leave--so long as he stayed away from the West Coast. He was working as a cook at the Radisson Hotel in Minneapolis when he met fellow chef Dan Schoof.

“He was a big, hulking guy, but he was a devout Christian, and he and his wife invited me and my friend Toke Yonekawa to go to church with them,” recalled Shishino, whose father was a devoted Buddhist.

The Schoofs’ home and the small Lutheran church they attended near Minneapolis soon became magnets for other young Japanese Americans who shared Shishino’s experiences. The pastor, Harold Schweigert, risked his congregation and even his job in welcoming a group of then-outcasts, and the Schoofs became targets of an FBI investigation because of their friendships with the young Japanese Americans, Shishino said.

“There was a lot of prejudice against us at the time. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with us. But Dan and Ann and Rev. Schweigert befriended over a hundred persons of Japanese ancestry in the next three years,” recalled Shishino, adding that their example helped him and others decide to become Christians.

In July 1946, Shishino returned to Los Angeles with his mother and brother, and the Schoofs, with no immediate family or other ties to keep them in Minnesota, soon followed. One Sunday they accompanied some of their young Japanese American friends, looking for a new spiritual home, to a local Lutheran church. The pastor soon visited the Schoofs at home, telling them that some of the congregation had objected to their friends’ presence and asking that they not bring them back to his church.

“That began the Schoofs’ dream of building a church for Japanese,” Shishino said.

With the help of the Mission Board of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Pacific Southwest District, the dream became reality a decade later. St. Thomas opened in 1957 in rented quarters at a YMCA building in the Crenshaw district. It acquired its own property, a vacant house in Gardena, in 1961, and, in 1980, the growing, multicultural congregation built a sleek, skylighted modern church on its present site along bustling Normandie Avenue.

During the 1980s, church membership grew to about 185, including enough young families to keep the nursery busy. They were a diverse lot. Besides the Japanese Americans who helped found the congregation, there were members of Filipino, Chinese, Korean, African American and European ancestry.

“We all got along great--that’s the important thing,” said Charles Cataldo, the congregation’s last president. He added with a wry grin, “You should have been at our barbecues. We had the best!”

“There was such a feeling of friendship among us, a feeling of comfort with your fellow worshipers,” said longtime member Pat Hoyle. “It really went deeper than camaraderie.”

But the children grew up, members moved away, and the congregation dwindled. Shishino sensed that it was time to let go. Last year, he broached the subject of selling the church and putting the proceeds to good use in other causes.

“It’s selfish for a small group to keep such a beautiful church when others need so much,” he recalled telling fellow members at one of their monthly meetings. The others soon agreed, and the task of finding a buyer and deciding what to do with the proceeds began.

“We had a lot of discussion about it, but in the end, our decisions were unanimous,” Cataldo said.

The endowment fund commemorating the Schoofs will enable Concordia University to award three scholarships annually--one named for the late pastor Schweigert of Minnesota, one to honor the Rev. Lloyd Warneke, a local minister who helped the church through some rocky times over the years, and one in memory of St. Thomas Church itself.

There also will be some cash awards to individuals who helped the church--including money to buy a computer for its pastor, the Rev. Paul Guebert, who agreed to come out of retirement more than five years ago when the congregation desperately needed a minister.

The church’s last days have been bittersweet.

Masako Matsuoka, who was baptized at St. Thomas when it still rented space at the YMCA, joined the others last week as they gathered in the sanctuary for one last round of picture-taking.

“I started coming because the Schoofs became my friends when I first moved out here,” Matsuoka said quietly. “I will miss it.”

But the last service--held on April 5, Palm Sunday--was by all accounts far more celebratory than funereal.

“It was joyous,” said longtime member Julie Biegert. “We all knew that while our church was ending, its spirit was going to continue” through the donations the congregation was bestowing.

Ninety-one people attended the final service, including many former members who had moved out of town. They all brought flowers and lined them up along the chancel rail. Church secretary and organist Dorothea Jaster played “Lift High the Cross,” “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna,” “When Morning Guilds the Skies” and the “Doxology,” complete with lyrics she had composed to add to the original.

Afterward, they honored the again-retiring Guebert and his wife, Marie, with a rousing rendition of “Pass in Review.”

Then, in a party reminiscent of those long-ago multicultural potlucks, they all adjourned for brunch--catered by a Vietnamese chef.