Japanese Fighter Pilot

This story has been circulating on the internet through e-mail for a long time. It goes like this...

A team of missionaries serving in Japan meet an old Japanese man who tells them about an experience he had in WWII while serving as a pilot during the Pearl Harbor raid. He states that while he was involved in the raid he noticed a beautiful white building and felt like he just had to bomb it. When he attempted to release his bombs, nothing happened. He tried his guns. Again, nothing happened. So the pilot decides to fly out over the ocean and try again. He tries dropping his bombs over the ocean and lo and behold they drop. He fires his guns and they work. So, he decides to go back and try again. Nothing happens. He turns around to go back to the battle, then decides he couldn't live with the shame and decides to return to the white building and crash his plane into it. As soon as he decides this, all of a sudden he can't turn his plane around. He returns home shamed. Years later 2 mormon missionaries come to his door and he invites them in. They give him a discussion and in the course of the discussion they show the man a picture of the Hawaii temple. The man goes crazy and kicks the missionaries out.

Sounds like a cool story huh? There are a few problems however. Here is a list of "red flags" that can help you recognize a false story.

1- A Japanese pilot in WWII was very disciplined and would have had as his objective the destruction of the American naval fleet. He would never have been distracted by a whim to go blow up that "pretty white building over there."

2- A Japanese pilot would have killed himself (Kamakazee) before he would return and suffer the shame of such a failed attack.

3- The Hawaii Temple is located at a significant distance from Pearl Harbor. It would have been unlikely that a pilot heavily involved in a surprise attack would have had time to wander sufficiently far from the battle scene to notice the temple.

These alone should be enough to discount the story. However, in order to be sure and to not trifle with sacred things, we called the Hawaii Temple and were informed that the story has been going around for a long time and was in fact false. As you can see, this is a classic Faith Story. It provides the hearer with a sense of comfort knowing that the Lord protects his saints and Kingdom. However, it is still false.