OIljrtBtian-AtttPticantzattntt Ofnnffrfnce 336 Hall &tmt. EO0 Angclca. Ofalif. 31s (ElyriBtiamtg a Hirage? BY A MISSIONARY "Is Christianity only a mirage, Teacher? Is it only a mirage?" There was a world of pathos and earnestness in the face and voice of this young Japanese farmer, as he and his wife sat around the table with the worker from the American Missionary Association, after hav- ing shared with him their noon-day meal in their rough bunk-house out in the fields of the Imperial Valley in Southern California. The mis- sionary had known this young man in Japan and had heard from the lips of his former pastor, the story of his early boyhood. It was quite a number of years ago, in Kobe, japan. They were organizing a campaign to raise money for a new church, the old plant being totally inadecjuate for their growing work. This earnest band of Japanese Christians were gathered together to pledge what they could for the new church. The Ladies' Aid pledged so much; the men's organization, not to be out-done, doubled the amount; here and there individuals were pledging as much as they could out of their meager incomes, when suddenly up jumped a little boy about ten years old. named Miyake San, and said, "I'll pledge fifty yen for the boys !" A ripple of laughter went around the room . "How could that little group of boys raise fifty yen ($25) for the church! Why it was impossible. If those kids pooled all the money they had in the world they couldn't produce twenty yen. Little Miyake San was merely carried away by the enthusiasm of the others and didn't really know what he was say- ing," were the thoughts of the older people as they started to ignore the pledge so utterly impossil)le of fulfillment. But young Miyake San insisted. "No, Sir ! I want you to put down our pledge ! We boys will give fifty yen!" So, to please him, they put it down. "Fifty yen from the boys of the Sundav School," with no idea whatsoever that the pledge would be redeemed. But young Miyake San gathered the boys around him and said, "See here, a friend of mine has promised to give me a lot of picture post-cards of Neeshima (the founder of the Doshisha Christian Uni- versity), and if we'll go out on the hills and pick wild flowers and make bouquets and put these post-cards with them we can sell them for ten sen apiece and make a lot of money!" So they set to work with a will and soon, scattered all over that city, were little boys selling flowers and post-cards. The pastor one evening was walking out in the suburbs of Kobe on his way to see a sick parishioner when sud- denly, from the roadside in the dusk of the evening twilight, a little boy accosted him. "Say, Mister, don't you want to buy some flowers?" "What are you selling flowers for, at this time of pight?" asked the pastor. "Oh, we boys are raising some money to help build a new 2 church and we've earned a lot of money already! Won't you please buy a bunch? Here is a post-card that goes with it too. It's only ten sen !" So he bought the Howers and the boy went away happy. Early and late those boys worked under the leadership of JMiyake San. When the day came for them to redeem their pledge, they brought in nearly sixty yen instead of the fifty yen which they had promised, much to the surprise of everyone in the church. So, as they sat together, the Missionary and Miyake San, now grown to young manhood, he told the story of his later life. "When 1 left school," he said, "I went to work with my two brothers who had a fairly flourishing business in Kobe. But I was not satisfied. At last 1 told my brothers that I was going to leave them and go to America." "Why, what's the idea?" they asked. "Aren't you making enough money?" "No, it isn't that," he replied, "but 1 want to go to a Chris- tian country. I want to live and work with Christians, with people who are honest, whom I can trust and who will trust me. I don't care how low down I'll have to start or how hard I'll have to work, because I am a Christian and I want to live and work with Christians." So he left his home and his brothers and his country and came to America! "Christian America !" thinking very naively, very childishly, if you will, that in "Christian America" everybody was a Christian, and to be trusted as a brother. He came, trusting every American whom he saw. The story he told that afternoon, of how his trust had been abused and violated, of how he had been cheated and deceived by those whom he had supposed were Christians, because they were Americans, made the face of the worker burn with shame for those countrymen who, of course, were not Christian at all. The story is too long to tell, but just one incident might be mentioned. An American neighbor told him that if he would clear off a certain piece of land and put it in shape for cultivation he could have the use of it for the next three years without further charge for rental. It was a verbal agree- ment, for surely a "Christian American" could be trusted ! So Miyake San went to work with a will and succeeded so well that in the first year he was able to get a partial crop from a portion of the tract. By the planting time of the second year it was all cleared and ready for use. Then the owner came, demanding a high cash rental. When the "Jap" indignantly refused, reminding him of his promise of the year before, the owner denied making any such promise and drove the "dirty Jap who was trying to sneak out of paying his rent" ofif of his land and used it himself ! "These 'Japs' are tricky, you know, and you have ' to watch them every minute or they'll cheat you out of your eye- teeth!" "Down here in the Valley," continued Miyake San, "sometimes in the distance you can see a beautiful lake with mountains and trees reflected in the still waters. It is a beautiful sight! Then suddenly it disappears — it is only a mirage! And often I've sat here in my bunk-house in the evenings after work and wondered if Christianity were only a mirage, too. Ever since I was a little boy in Sunday school, way back in Japan, I've loved Christ and thought His teachings were the most lieautiful in all the world ! I've loved them and tried to follow 3 CABBAGE AND LETTUCE FARM, LOS ANCELES, CALIFORNIA them, but now in Christian America I wonder if after all it is anything more than a beautiful picture. Teacher, is Christianity only a mirage?" There were tears in his eyes as he asked the question which trembled on his lips. The question comes right back home to us here in "Christian America" — How much does Christianity really mean to us after all? is it merely a beautiful teaching, a dream of an Idealist, a mirage that vanishes in the heat of practical every-day life? Someone sneers, in the bitterness of the recent election, at the Utopian vision of a Universal Brotherhood of Man. Is it true that we cannot work out our economic and social re- lationships one with the other, one race with another, on the basis of justice and fair-dealing founded on the principles which Christ laid down for us? If so, then perhaps after all Christianity is only a mirage! i; ■■■mj- i "Consider the menace to our country from Buddhism," says an- other. "Do you know that the Japanese have brought their heathen religion with them into America and today in the city of Fresno a Buddhist temple costing over ten thousand dollars is being erected! Do you know that Buddhist temples are to be found in every part of California, where Japanese have settled in any considerable numbers! Do you know that we are threatened by an invasion of heathen Buddhism right here in Christian America !" 4 It is true that Japanese, most of whom were nominally Buddhists Ijefore they came to this country, are nominally Buddhists still, espe- cially since the priests who have come over and set up their temples, are perfectly willing to let the "believer" be merely nominal, so long as he pays his dues. But everywhere, you hear from the lips of the Japanese themselves — "Bukyo wa, dame desu" (Buddhism is useless). All the priest thinks about is funerals and money — funerals, because he gets his largest fees then. Some time ago a Buddhist- priest went to San Diego, rented a hall and opened a "Buddhist Temple." There weren't enough funerals down there, however, to make it pay, so he soon gave it up and went away. But, let me ask you, Christian friend, what is the best way to combat the Buddhism which has found its way into our country ? Can we stamp it out best by harsh legislative measures directed against the Japanese? Shall we discriminate against them and make it so hard and disagreeable for them tliat they'll be only too glad to hurry back to Japan just as fast as they can and carry back their hated religion with them and thus free our Christian country of heathenism? What would they be able to tell their countrymen in Japan about the Christianity they had come in contact with in America? Do you think their story of unjust treatment, of sneers instead of friendship, of hate instead of l)rotherhood, of race prejudice and class discrimination, colored and exaggerated, as it no doubt would be, under the sting of such treatment in "Christian America," would help the Missionaries we have sent over there win un-Christian Japan to Christ ? Would it not appear to them — in spite of all the teaching and preaching of the Missionaries to the contrary — that Christianity was only a mirage! Isn't it rather by living out in our lives as individuals and as a people the living realities of Christianity and Christian principles that we can best combat Buddhism? If the aliens from Japan or any other country actually come in contact with a living, vital Christianity, all that is false in their old beliefs will most certainly die out. In other words, we must overcome IBuddhism with Christianity actually lived and practiced in our national life. What better way to win Japan for Christ- — to save the Orient, yes, and the Occident, too, from the growing menace of an un-Christian civilized, military power such as Japan is coming to be — than to see to it that every Japanese who goes back to Japan (between five and six thousand go back every year) has come into contact with a living Chris- tianity. If every returning Japanese were a missionary for Christ, how long would it take for Japan to be evangelized? The responsi- bility is ours. Are we meeting it adequately? Is the Church avvake to the opportunity? This does not mean that we should vote for the yellow man as against the white man, not at all. Not that we should open the doors of our country to free and unlimited immigration, by no means. To allow a great influx of Oriental labor into our country is not dealing justly either with the yellow man or the white man. Certainly not. To guard against a mass contact with its contingent problems and difficulties is absolutely essential. All far-seeing Californians and 5 Japanese agree that severe restriction of the immigration of laboring classes is both necessary and right. But immigration restriction is one thing while the treatment of the aliens who are already here in America is quite another. The two should not be confused. Just what, then, are the conditions which we face on our Western border, in California? Mpnmst Pnjiulatinn anfi 2JirH?-rat0 The people everywhere were told through the newspapers that the birth-rate of the Japanese was so high that if the increase continued at the same rate for the next hundred years, from that source alone, the Japanese population would equal or even surpass the white popula- tion ! But what are the facts ? The number of married Japanese women in California is 15,211, while the number of children under sixteen years of age is 19,653, or less than two children per family. There were more white children born in 1917 (47,314) than all the Japanese children born in California during the past ten years (28,182). In addition to this we must remember that, as a matter of fact, California is not de- pendent on her birth-rate for her increase in population. Her popula- tion is. increasing at the rate of aljout one million every decade. The total increase in the population of California during the last ten years, according to the United States Census for 1920, is 1,049,312, while the Japanese population increased only 28,838. The Japanese comprise just two per cent of California's population, and yet the 98 per cent of the people are warned against this terrilile menace, due to the fact that the 1.7 per cent Japanese population has increased to the alarming figure of 2 per cent, an increase of just three-tenths of one per cent in ten years. What an appalling menace ! Especially when we consider that this paltry 2 per cent are practically all law-abiding, industrious people who are not filling our jails or poor-houses, or manufacturing bombs, but are busy producing food for the rest of the 98 per cent to eat. Then the argument shifts and we are told that after all the real danger comes from the fact that the "Japs" are buying up all the best land of California, and it won't be very long before the "Japs" will have gained the economic and agricultural control of the fair state of Cali- fornia. Thus by a "bloodless invasion," California will become merely a colony of Japan! But let us stick to the FACTS. There are twenty- seven million acres of "farm-land" in California, of which about eleven million acres has been cultivated, leaving sixteen million acres of "unim- proved farm-land." The amount of land actually owned by the Japanese, either as individuals or in corporations is 74,769 acres, namely six- tenths of one per cent (.6%) of the total cultivated farm-land. In ad- dition, they lease, for three years or less, 383,287 acres, which is just 3.3 per cent, of all cultivated land. 6 "Oh, as far as that is concerned," some farmers are frank enough to admit, "we don't want to drive the 'Jap' farmer out of Cahfornia, but we'll be very satisfied if this new Alien Land Law will drive the Japs off their own farms on to ours. We'd be glad to have him work for us !" The representative of the Los Angeles Farm Bureau, when asked at the recent Congressional investigation what they would do in Cali- fornia without the "Jap" farmers, presented a resolution which he said was sponsored by 2,000 farmers in the county, asking that the Federal Government pass legislation permitting the bringing in of thousands of (Oriental coolies under contract to work on the farms ! Undoubtedly California needs farmers, but does she need contract labor? To throttle the desire to own their own home and be independent, by discrimina- tory legislation, directed against any class of people in this country, pre- venting them frcjm being nothing more than "farm-hands" all their hves, like serfs or peons, is un-democratic, un-American and un-Christian ! A JAPANESE COURT, WHERE THEY OWX rilEIR OWN HOMES ^tanJiarba of ffittrtttg "The trouble with the 'Japs' is their standard of living,' says an- other. "Just look at the rough shacks they live in, the cheapest kind of hovels, no plumbing, little or no furniture and no paint. A self- respecting white man would be un-willing to live there for a minute." 7 Further than that, as the Farm Bureau representative pointed out, as a matter of fact, these Japanese farmers are "not good economic fac- tors," because a farmer to be a good economic factor must be a permanent tenant. Now, the "Japs" are not permanent tenants, they are always moving around, here this year, there next year, and are there- fore not good economic factors. What is the reason? We don't have to go far to find it in the Alien Land Law of 1913 which prohibited Japanese from renting or leasing land for more than three years at a time. What man is there, white, black or yellow, with any gray matter at all, who would build a nice house and fix it up with plumbing and all, if he could only lease the land for three years ? Where the Japanese own their land and homes, they adopt higher standards and live about as well as their white neighbors. Calif ornians passed a law practically compelling the Japanese to move at the end of a three-year lease and then criticise him because he does move around and is not a "good economic factor." It would seem rather that the makeshift law itself was not a good economic factor ! Now they have passed a new law absolutely prohibiting aliens in- eligible to citizenship (Japanese), from renting land at all. This will have the tendency to drive the Japanese off the farms into the cities to compete in already over-crowded industries. Our problem will thus be increased and friction aggravated instead of being relieved. The new law cannot afifect immigration or the inciease in population, and is, in fact, a hindrance to the Americanization of these people. Will this law not be more harmful than helpful to California, as well as detri- mental to the friendly relations between two nations now at peace with one another? There is no problem in the California Japanese situation which can- not be solved by a sincere application of the principles of Democracy and Christianity. By strictly guarding the doors of immigration, and then giving equal treatment under the law to all, endeavoring to bring "he different groups into closer contact with the best of American in- stitutions and in touch with a vital Christianity, the problem will be solved almost within a generation. Will you not. Christian Reader, do your part in showing the reality of our religion to all strangers within our gates? By eliminating race prejudice and opposing all discrimination, and lending a friendly hand whenever possible, let us show conclusively that Christianity is not only a mirage! 8