PROLOGUE

There have been times during periods of great conflict between nations when a series of seemingly random events may combine to create an irresistible force, from which unforeseen consequences will flow. Battles that should be won are lost. Weaker nations rise, stronger ones fall.

On a blustery, wet morning in the bitter fall of 1905, Joseph Trumpeldor, a 25 year-old Jew, the only person of his faith commissioned as an officer in the Russian Czar's army, strode across the muddy prison compound at Sinagowa in Northern Japan for an appointment with the Japanese Commandant.

Decorated after a bloody battle in which he lost his right arm rescuing ten men, including the Crown Prince Miklavich, Trumpeldor, rather than attempt an awkward salute, observed military formality with an elaborately courteous bow.

The Commandant, beset with those problems attendant upon the care and feeding of thousands of Russian prisoners, braced himself for whatever demand this Jew, who had organized the Jewish prisoners into a group called B'nai Zion, had come here to make. Waving aside an offer of tea, Trumpeldor informed the Commandant that Yom Kippur, the highest of his religion’s holy days, was only weeks away, and he requested that a private room large enough to accommodate them be made available for worship.

The Commandant couldn’t help wondering what mischief might be brewing here – perhaps an elaborately disguised escape attempt. He had heard of Christianity, and of Judaism, and even that a few eccentric Japanese had risked exclusion from their nation’s elite by professing a belief in those exotic religions. Rumors that certain high placed Japanese were even planning to offer Manchuria, recently won from a defeated Russia, as a homeland for the eternally wandering Jewish people, he had discounted out of hand.

Yet uneasy about venturing into areas beyond his jurisdiction, the Commandant told Trumpeldor that he would take his request under consideration, and make a decision as soon as he finished dealing with more pressing matters.

But no sooner had Trumpeldor been ushered out than the Commandant hastened to a nearby monastery, where he consulted with Shinto priests.

The priests, though not much better informed, were able to tell him that a High Temple Tribunal had been formed by the Meiji Emperor to look into the philosophies, politics and religions of all other peoples, including the Jews. The Emperor reasoned that a country as insular as Japan needed to acquire as much knowledge and establish as many connections as it could if it were to take its rightful place in the world. Who better than the Jews, more widely scattered than any other people, to explain that world to them?

Assuring the worried Commandant that they would advise him after studying the matter further, the priests immediately sent a novice to the Emperor’s Court in Tokyo requesting a meeting with the High Tribunal.

The Tribunal wasted no time. Out of a pool of their most eminent scholar-historians, who had already begun the enormous task of recording all of the world's knowledge, they selected Mashima Turu, eldest son of a Meiji Lord, to travel immediately to the Shinagawa prison camp to observe this mysterious religion first hand.

The Commandant, relieved that a decision of this magnitude had been made by others, summoned Trumpeldor. Magnanimously, he informed the Jew that his request to have a place for private worship had been granted – if he allowed two Shinto priests and a scholar who had come from Tokyo for this very purpose, to be present as observers.

Trumpeldor saw no reason to protest. The service, though makeshift, was appropriately devout. Its participants, though every move was scrutinized by the designated observers, betrayed few signs of self-consciousness.

Mashima, as instructed by the Tribunal, stayed on to interrogate these observant Jews. The more they told him about the origins of their faith, and their people's wanderings (the “Diaspora”) far from their holy land, called “Alman (orphan) Israel,” the more fascinated Mashima became.

Once the prisoners were repatriated to Russia, Mashima returned to Tokyo. He immediately petitioned the Tribunal to allow him to continue his research in the Middle East: “So I may see and better understand the spiritual beginnings of these indomitable people who have wandered so long and so far, in some cases to the very ends of the earth, sustained by no more than an imperishable faith in their eventual return to their homeland."

Endorsed by the Tribunal, Mashima's petition was forwarded to the Emperor, who had recently appointed a Jewish Expert, the young Baron Korekiyo Takahashi, to oversee all contacts with the Jews. The Baron interviewed Mashima. Impressed by the young scholar's enthusiasm and intellectual depth, he recommended the Emperor's approval, which was given.

Before Mashima could depart, however, his father died. As the eldest son, it was his duty to manage the family business, which dealt with the budding electronic industry. It was also his responsibility to see that the family line continued. He married Nobuta Yuko, devout daughter of a family prominent as his own. In 1915, she bore him a son, Kenzo, whose superior intelligence and aptitude for languages would one day lead him to work as a cryptographer in the Naval High Command.

It was 1920, two years after the end of World War I, before Mashima was able to make his journey to Palestine. Mashima carried a letter of introduction from Baron Takahashi to a Chaim Shapira, an inventor in the budding electronics field, who was to be Mashima's host and sponsor during his stay.

Shapira, a refugee from the village of Kishinev, in Russia, had fled the Bolshevik Revolution with his wife, Devrah, and young son, Eli, to the “promised land.” Shapira possessed exceptional mechanical skills. Though a former Talmudic student, he'd become a machinist by trade, then a teacher at the mechanical trade school, where he had developed a crude ionic conductor which, when attached to a generator, nearly doubled its electrical output.

Despite language and cultural barriers, Mashima and Chaim became fast friends. Under Chaim's tutelage, Mashima became deeply involved in the study of Jewish history and religion. He had been searching for an excuse that would enable him to remain beyond his allotted time and realized, when Chaim showed him his invention, that a solution was at hand.

Mashima sent for his wife's younger brother, Yoshi, an engineer connected by blood to the Mitsubishi, one of four families who together owned almost ninety per cent of Japan's wealth. Yoshi immediately saw the commercial possibilities in the ionic conductor, and in late 1921 a licensing contract between Shapira and Mitsubishi was signed.

This business relationship called for frequent trips between Japan and Palestine. During the next decade the bonds of friendship between the Turu, Yuko and Shapira families grew ever stronger.

During this period too the Japanese ruling classes -- to which both Japanese families belonged -- had been doing its utmost to force Japan's people into the industrial age, resulting in student revolts, labor and farm strikes, the rise of extremist political parties, and the growing use of military force to achieve the nation's economic and political ends.

Both Mashima and Yoshi, distressed by what they perceived as their country's repudiation of Shinto and Confucian principles, turned for spiritual sustenance to other forms of religious thought.

By 1934, dismayed by the Emperor's acquiescence to the military's brutal provocation at Mikden, used as an excuse for the army's invasion of China, Mashima and Yoshi traveled once more to Palestine, where they informed their old friend and Talmudic mentor Shapira that they each had come to a highly personal and difficult decision, arrived at after a lengthy and profound meditation.

They wished to convert to Judaism.

They assured Shapira that they understood the difficulties they and their families would encounter in adhering to the strictures of their new faith in a world that was becoming increasingly intolerant.

Would he help them? And could they trust him to keep their conversion secret, which, if revealed, would jeopardize their position in Japanese society?

Shapira's answer to both questions was yes.

None of them there realized that only a few years hence their world, and almost every country in it, large and small, would be involved in a violent conflict.

These men of profound faith and deep-seated patriotism certainly had no inkling that one day soon some would be forced to choose between betrayal of faith or betrayal of country.