Gilbert Bowles, Mansaku. Nakamura and Seiju Hirakawa were such emissaries, at one time going as far as West China. Letters of Christian good will were exchanged between the two Yearly Meetings, even after feelings in both countries were running high. One very good place to see the peace movement in Japan in its practical workings was at the Bowles' dinner table, at which Minnie P. Bowles presided with her inexhaustible spirit of hospitality. Gilbert Bowles at the other end of the table, would be directing the conversation into channels that made all the guests assembled there from many quarters, feel at home and enlightened.
Westerners often ask about the conscientious objector movement in Japan.
If there is such a movement, it is not allowed to become public. It will not become a widespread movement, I think, because Japanese ways of thinking are different from those of the West in so many respects. In the first place they have been taught in the feudal days of the past, as well as in imperialistic times in the present, the duty of absolute obedience on the part of the subject to his overlord. Because the whole is, more important than any of its parts, there is nothing to do but to sacrifice the individual judgment, even at such times as it repudiates the demands made on it by that whole. In such cases they feel that this is not sin for them, because it has been taken out of their hands and is therefore no longer their moral responsibility.