Churches Relive a Victory Over Hate

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor more than half a century ago, Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church promptly rallied its armies of God into service. But to the mostly white congregation of this well-known pacifist church, that meant an unusual course of action: taking care of a Japanese American church just a mile away while its members were evacuated from the West Coast and interned in remote camps.

Mt. Hollywood took legal ownership of the church, Hollywood Independent, and returned it after the war in a move that helped avert the mass property loss that devastated so many Japanese Americans. Mt. Hollywood members also volunteered to keep the books, clean the premises, even run the Sunday school. One member, Victor Ryland, took care of the grounds, until he was called to war himself and killed in battle with the Japanese.

The church’s testament to friendship and fellowship over wartime hatred and hysteria was presented Sunday, when the two congregations reunited for a joint service celebrating their longtime bonds and the 56th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Mt. Hollywood’s light-filled sanctuary in Los Feliz, strung with hundreds of Japanese paper cranes--a symbol of peace--the moving service featured recollections from both sides, along with special songs, poems and presentations about Hiroshima.

“It’s not so much what we did for them,” said Mt. Hollywood’s current pastor, Paul Tellstrom. “The circumstances gave us an opportunity to act on our faith . . . to be a reminder of the importance of doing the right thing, despite the consequences.”

Mt. Hollywood members at the time shrug off questions of why they did what they did. Members of the two neighborhood churches, both United Church of Christ congregations, had already formed bonds before the war. “We were brought up in this church to be pacifists and to love everyone, so it was normal for us to feel compassion,” said Purcell Brown Jr. “We didn’t look at the Japanese [Americans] as our enemies. They were our friends and neighbors, and we were appalled at the fact that our own government would do this to them.”

In fact, Mt. Hollywood has a long tradition of embracing the rejected.

In 1918, during World War I, the Rev. Edwin Ryland was kicked out of the First Methodist Church of Hollywood for his pacifism and became the minister at Mt. Hollywood, according to Tellstrom. One-third of Ryland’s congregation followed him.

Mt. Hollywood became one of the earliest churches in Los Angeles to integrate in the 1930s, accepting black members with no hint of resistance, said church member Wyndon Brown, 77, an African American whose family joined seven decades ago.

The tradition continued during World War II when the pastor at the time, Allan Hunter, made Mt. Hollywood a haven for both conscientious objectors and Japanese Americans.

Today, many Japanese Americans still remember Hunter, who died in 1983, with deep reverence.

“A lot of the Issei [Japanese immigrants] saw in him Jesus,” said Miyo Abe, 77, who is still a member of the Hollywood Independent church. Abe’s family home was cared for during the war by a Mt. Hollywood member, who rented it out for $35 a month and sent the proceeds to the interned family.

During the war, Hunter fired off letters to elected officials protesting the internment. Failing to change any minds, he mobilized his congregation to support the Japanese Americans. Aside from caring for their church property, Hunter and others helped them pack their belongings, and showed up at Hollywood Independent with sandwiches and coffee on the morning in May 1942 when buses were to take the Japanese away.

Wyndon Brown was one of those helpers. On Sunday, he and others recalled the startling sight of armed soldiers, the last-minute sell-offs of new pianos and pick-up trucks for pennies on the dollar, the futile attempt to cram a lifetime of possessions into the one suitcase each internee was allowed to carry.

“It was really sad, but there was also a great amount of love and warmth between us that made it less painful,” he said.

Hunter frequently visited Manzanar, one of the internment camps. And when the Japanese Americans returned after the war, the congregation held a welcome dinner for them--even as others in town harassed them with slurs and denied them homes and jobs.

Longtime Mt. Hollywood members Jim and Joy Ito were so grateful to Hunter that they named their son after him--which is why Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito’s middle name is Allan.

In gratitude, Hollywood Independent gave $100 to Mt. Hollywood shortly after the war. The church used it to buy a piece of camphor wood charred in the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima, then voted to use part of it to make the cross that graces its altar.

On Sunday, the rest of the visibly charred log was prominently placed in front of the altar as “a dramatic reminder that God loves all people, and that we in turn must learn to love our neighbors as ourselves,” according to the church program.

The service featured a talk with children about Sadako Sasaki, the 12-year-old Hiroshima girl who has become a symbol of peace for her unsuccessful attempt to fold 1,000 paper cranes before she died from her bombing injuries. James Yamazaki, a physician sent to study the impact of the atomic blasts on children, spoke about his experiences there. The Rev. Anne Cohen of Hollywood Independent wrote a special poem and prayer for the occasion, and Sheldon Gordon wrote a “Hiroshima Hymn.”

Tellstrom brainstormed the idea for the joint service after reading Yamazaki’s book on his Hiroshima experiences. The pastor said he is trying to carry on the church’s special outreach to those thrown out of other places--pacifists, racial minorities, homosexuals like himself.

“I’m here to help the church in one corner of the world provide a place without prejudice for people, wherever they are in their spiritual journeys,” Tellstrom said.