As we commemorate Pearl Harbor in the month of December, here is an interesting look at a group of little-discussed Saints whose lives were affected by the soldiers who responded to that tragedy 78 years ago.
The story of Latter-day Saints in Micronesia (a vast Pacific area of 2,100 small islands located between Hawaii and the Philippines) really begins with Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed US forces in Hawaii and Guam. Four hours later, the Japanese bombed Wake Island, which surrendered after 16 days of brutal fighting. There, Forrest Packard, a Latter-day Saint civilian construction worker and Idaho father of 16 children, became a prisoner of war. He chose to minister to others and become known as “the little chaplain.” Forrest and about 1,300 other prisoners were placed in crowded holds on the converted luxury line Nitta Maru and shipped to Japan, then mainland China. He recorded all the deaths on a scrap of paper that he rolled up and hid inside a hollow bamboo stick, guarding this record with his life.1
Then there are Latter-day Saint brothers Jack and William “Bill” Taylor, who were part of that same group of POWs. They spent three and a half years in the Woo Sung and Kiang Whan prison camps in China. They survived beatings, malnutrition, and dysentery. In May 1945, while they were being transferred to Japan, on the third night out of Shanghai bound for Beijing in Northern China, the train was traveling about 35 to 40 miles per hour when Bill Taylor and another POW leaped off into the darkness. Unfortunately, Taylor was recaptured, but he was soon liberated by the forces of Mao Tse-tung, with whom he had a snapshot taken.2
These are just two of many stories of Latter-day Saints in Micronesia living their faith in difficult situations. Here are a few more insights into the lives of these courageous members of the Church.
Worshiping at Sea
Most Latter-day Saints involved in the Pacific War faced long periods of travel punctuated by weekly worship services and occasional intense combat situations. In 1942, US forces began amassing to retake the Pacific. The Enterprise and Yorktown aircraft carriers conducted the first air raids on Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati on February 1. But it wasn’t until the US won a decisive victory at Midway Island on June 4 and 5 that Latter-day Saint military personnel began to hold weekly worship meetings in Kwajalein and Midway and became well established there.
Around the same time, while serving aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid with Torpedo Squadron Number 10, sailor Ralph Littlefield Albiston wanted to find fellow Saints. So he researched the records of more than 4,000 crewmen, finding 23. He located all of them and asked if they would join in church services before asking the Catholic chaplain for permission to gather. When he denied them permission, Albiston asked the Protestant chaplain, who granted permission as long as he could supervise. The men gathered to sing, study scriptures, and partake of the sacrament. At first, they took the bread and water using plates and paper cups, but Albiston made cups for the water out of empty 20-mm gun casings that were cleaned and polished and eventually silver plated. Another Latter-day Saint sailor made a beautiful wooden tray. These became treasured heirlooms.3
Image from the Church History Museum
The First Micronesian Meetinghouse
In heated battles during June–July 1944, US Marines took Saipan from the Japanese. Shortly thereafter, the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in Micronesia was built late in the year. Marine (and future apostle) L. Tom Perry lived a year on Saipan. He wrote:
There were a good number of [Latter-day Saint] men on the island from the Air Force, the Seabees, and of course, the Marines. We obtained permission from the island chaplain to erect a tent to hold our church services. It served us well until the infrequent air raids caused several holes to develop in the tent. . . .
Since the tent had several holes in it (the tropical rains were rather frequent), it was not the greatest place to hold religious service. So we decided that what we needed was a chapel to hold our meetings. We called a group together and proposed the idea that we build a . . . chapel on the island of Saipan. It was a pretty outlandish proposal. We had no experience, no tools, no materials, but we knew that a group of . . . priesthood holders working together with a common purpose and united could accomplish anything.
From the different branches of service, we set about to gather materials. We were surprised at the response we received. The Seabees supplied us with all the tools we needed. The Marines and the Air Force contributed most of the building materials. Now the problem was, who will design the chapel? We checked all of the servicemen. None of them had built anything, except we found a farmer from the state of Idaho that had helped his father build a barn. We made him the design and construction supervisor, and we started about the process of building our chapel. Each evening after our day’s duty was over, we would go to the construction site and begin our work. . . .
We were only able to hold one church service in our building. The next morning, Monday morning, we loaded our sea bags, boarded ship, and headed to Japan.4
L. Tom Perry (tallest man on back row) with fellow Latter-day Saint servicemen.
Saints in Guam
Latter-day Saints arrived on Guam in August 1944, when US Marines took the island from the Japanese. That month, Lewis W. Gale and six or seven other Latter-day Saints met in a foxhole. Ralph Dean Gurr also remembers meeting on Guam in a shell hole without even a tent overhead. He recalls that a guy at the meeting said, “I’m not LDS, but I’m gonna be and I want to be. I want to be just like you guys are. I know that your gospel is true. I know that Jesus is the Christ. . . . I want you to pray for me. I want to be baptized, and I want to believe this. I want to be one of you.” He was soon baptized in the Pacific Ocean.5
Following the end of World War II in 1945, a group of Latter-day Saint servicemen and their families began holding meetings and baptizing new members, eventually growing into the Guam Branch of the Japanese Mission, which was organized on October 9, 1951, with Victor Olsen as president. Victor and his wife, Gwen, were mainstays of the Church on Guam. About that time, Elbert D. Thomas, a former US senator who was also a Latter-day Saint, became high commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, supervising local governments and building efforts throughout Micronesia.
Latter-day Saints dedicated a makeshift chapel formed from two Quonset huts in Agaña in 1953, and the Guam Branch became part of the Oahu Hawaii Stake (3,800 miles away) in October 1959, the same time that Elder Mark E. Petersen dedicated a second chapel. Stake president Max Moody was a captain in the naval reserve and visited Guam regularly.
Elder Joseph Fielding Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles dedicated Guam for missionary work on August 25, 1955. The first full-time missionaries arrived in January 1957: Elders Danny Gallego and Paul Ray. That same year, land was purchased in Anigua to build another chapel. An old Navy chapel, again consisting of two Quonset huts, was made available to the Latter-day Saints by a contractor that was removing it from Naval Station. The foundation and slab were prepared, and the buildings were moved there later that year. The first meeting held in the new chapel was on February 9, 1958. Though missionaries were no longer able to be sent to Guam in 1959, converts continued to be baptized, largely among the Latter-day Saint service personnel.
Chapel made of two Quonset huts in Agaña, Guam.
Hawaiian Connections
The Church in Hawaii has had close connection with Guam despite the distance. The Guam Ward was formed on March 3, 1970, within the Honolulu Hawaii Stake. On March, 10, Elder Ezra Taft Benson dedicated Guam’s first permanent chapel in Barrigada. On July 7, full-time missionary work resumed with the calls of Elders Michael D. Corrigan and Vern H. Liljenquist. Then the Kaneohe Hawaii Stake was formed on November 21, 1971, and Guam was placed under its supervision. Robert Finlayson was called as stake president, and counselors Robert Schutte and Don Austin both traveled to Guam regularly with their work.
In 1976, less than a year from the time missionaries first arrived on Saipan, the first baptisms in Micronesia outside Guam took place when, in January the Brad Nago family joined the Church. Brother Nago, in a story similar to that of many other converts in the area, first heard of the gospel from two members who were working on the construction of a new airport in Saipan. The Nagos led the Saipan Branch for many years.
The year 1976 was a dynamic time to discuss freedom, particularly in light of the US bicentennial of the independence from Great Britain. During that year of political debate about Micronesian independence, Elder John H. Groberg of the Seventy arrived in Honolulu on July 28 as an “area supervisor” for the Hawaii–Pacific Isles Area. Anticipating an end to the guarantees of religious freedom in the islands within the year, he requested a meeting with William W. Cannon, president of the Hawaii Honolulu Mission to establish local converts throughout Micronesia. On August 24, Groberg and Cannon met to decide where to send missionaries first.
That question was answered three days later, on August 27, when Elders Todd Hansen and Tim Bean brought into the mission office Ohren Ohry, a Pingelapese schoolteacher from Pohnpei who was studying at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. Ohry said he would be baptized if the Church would send missionaries to Pohnpei. When President Cannon agreed, Ohry was baptized. In quick succession, Elder Groberg and President Cannon sent missionaries to Pohnpei (October 23, 1976), to the Marshall Islands (February 3, 1977), to Chuuk (July 7, 1977), to Yap (November 14, 1977), and to Palau (July 5, 1978).
On July 12, 1978, the people of four former Trust Territory districts—Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Yap—met in a constitutional convention and voted in a referendum to create a body later known as the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Two years later, on April 1, 1980, the Church formed the Micronesia Guam Mission. Later, Latter-day Saint missionaries began teaching in Kosrae (March 26, 1985), Rota (September 5, 1986), and Ebeye in the Marshall Islands (May 16, 1989).
Looking to the Future
As Church membership continues to grow in Micronesia, the Saints there are excited for the future and look forward to many things, including a temple in Yigo, Guam, which President Russell M. Nelson announced in October 2018. Despite many difficulties and triumphs, the Church has blossomed in Micronesia, and now many indigenous members are leading the Church there. Today, stakes are found in Guam, Pohnpei, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, thanks largely in part to Latter-day Saint military personnel who found ways to live what they believed and who weren’t afraid to share the truths that they had found.
[1] Renon Klossner Hulet, “The Packard Family,” Ensign, February 1984, 33.
[2] William Taylor, personal notes in author’s possession; see also William Taylor, Rescued by Mao: World War II, Wake Island, and My Remarkable Escape to Freedom Across Mainland China (Salt Lake City: Silverleaf, 2007).
[3] Paraphrased from Robert Freeman, Saints at War: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Valor (Springville, UT: CFI: 2013), 156–57.
[4] L. Tom Perry, commencement address at Brigham Young University–Hawaii on 17 December 2010, http://devotional.byuh.edu/script/commencement-elder-perry.
[5] Quoted in Freeman, Saints at War, 172–73.
