Norma Hunt of Assist News tells the story of a Mennonite serviceman from Bakersfield named Theodore "Spud" Heinrichs sent to Tokyo, Japan to run a PX immediately after the Japanese surrender in August, 1945.
As December neared, former choir director Spud (pictured, left) lamented missing the annual singing of Handel's "Messiah" back in the states.
A chance meeting at his PX with a Japanese-American choir leader who had already trained 150 Japanese women to sing "Messiah" inspired the resourceful Spud to enlist 75 male singers to round out the choir.
That Christmas season 3000 people attended two peformances of Handel's masterpiece in battered downtown Tokyo – a needed lift for occupiers and occupied and for heralding a peace that has lasted.