An incident that brought home to me the ability of Love, or God, to transcend man-made barriers took place during World War II. I was a pupil in the Sunday School when the Christian Science Society in Tokyo was disbanded in 1940. A new law forced all Christian denominations to unite with one of only three recognized churches: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or the Church of Christ, which was the only recognized Protestant umbrella organization.
Thereafter, member of the former Society continued to meet in the home of Miyo Matsukata, one of the founders of the Tokyo Society. Copies of the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons, which are essential for use in Sunday church services and for daily study by Christian Scientists, reached us until early 1942, when we received the last Quarterlys mailed out before the attack on Pearl Harbor. We then read from old Quarterlys, going backward from 1941 to 1940 and so forth. Certainly these Lesson Sermons were inspiring, but I couldn't rid myself of the feeling that we were a small isolated community of Christian Scientists in Japan, cut off from the rest of the world, and that we were going backward while the rest of the world was moving forward. Mrs. Matsukata was very stalwart in her insistence that we were not cut off from the mothering of The Mother Church, in Boston, but as wartime conditions deteriorated, my own sense of loneliness and isolation increased.
During wartime, the police were very suspicious—but they did not suspect the chickens.
