In the 1950’s and 1960’s there was this one minister in Samoa who was elderly.
He lived with his daughter. Sometimes at night when he would be sitting in front of his daughter’s home he would cry out. The people in the neighborhood thought that he was sort of crazy.
At the beginning of World War II this man was a minister on an island in Micronesia or Melanesia. On that island there was a small garrison with a handful of New Zealand soldiers. The island was invaded by the Japanese at the beginning of the war. The Japanese were not really too concerned about the inhabitants of this island, but they detained the New Zealand soldiers. One day this minister was spying on the place where the soldiers were being held and he saw the Japanese soldiers laying the New Zealanders on the ground and chopping off their heads. The sight was so terrible for him, in later years that he would cry out at night because the thought of it was so troubling to him.
(This story came from Pacific Islands Monthly in the early 1980’s).
Revised: March 1, 1996
Copyright © 1996 Daniel (Taniera) Longstaff