Episcopal Church Returns Control of Bonin Islands Church to Nippon Seikokai
Diocesan Press Service. September 30, 1968 [69-4]
NEW YORK, N. Y. -- An era of history passes -- but the Church goes on. This is the capsule story of the Bonin Islands and the little Episcopal Church chapel on Chi Chi Jima called St. George's.
Better known than the island of Chi Chi Jima is another sister island in the Bonins called Iwo Jima, where American Marines fought and died and which 23 years ago came under American naval control during World War II. It has been under American control until just this summer when the islands once again were returned to the control of Japan. A third island in the Bonins is called Ha Ha Jima.
On June 26, on the same day that Japan resumed her sovereignty over the islands, the American Episcopal Church relinquished ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Nippon Seikokai, the Holy Catholic Church in Japan. The Nippon Seikokai, like the Episcopal Church, is a part of the Anglican Communion.
The one Episcopal congregation in the Bonin Islands is not large, although its membership represents a sizeable proportion of the population. Of the 207 inhabitants of Chi Chi Jima, 80 are Episcopalians. It has, however, had a colorful history.
The story of the Bonins goes back as far as 1543 when a captain of a Spanish galleon sailing out of Manila sighted them and noted it in the ship's log. They were later claimed by the British in the name of King George IV in 1825 and colonized under the direction of the British consul in Honolulu in 1830. Commodore Perry visited the islands in 1853; the Japanese annexed them in 1875, and the Americans took them in 1945.
The inhabitants of the Bonins are just about as colorful as their history, and the Rev. Isaac Gonzales, priest-in-charge of St. George's, is typical.
He numbers among his ancestors not only Japanese and Bonin Islanders, but a Portugese great-great-grandfather and a Polynesian great-great-grandmother from Hawaii.
Some of the inhabitants are the descendants of shipwrecked sailors of English descent which may account for their feeling of kinship to the Book of Common Prayer. The worship of the Anglican Church has been a constant in Chi Chi Jima life since the first settlement in 1830.
The first resident priest in the Bonins was the Rev. Joseph Gonzales, grandfather of the present pastor, who died in 1943 at the age of 74.
St. George's Church, which was named for England's patron saint and for King George IV, was consecrated by the Bishop of South Tokyo in 1909. It survived until the bombings of the Second World War and today has been replaced by a concrete structure built by the United States Navy. The new chapel was dedicated on March 29, 1967, and presented to the Japanese Church in June of this year.
The turnover marks the end of a 12-year period during which the Rt. Rev. Harry S. Kennedy, Bishop of Honolulu, has been the ecclesiastical overseer for the Episcopalians of Chi Chi Jima. Hereafter they will be officially residents of the city of Tokyo, a mere 600 miles away, and under the chief pastorate of the Bishop of Tokyo, the Rt. Rev. David M. Goto.
The Episcopal Church has been asked to continue for the time being its support of the Chi Chi Jima congregation, and a permanent dwelling is now being planned for the priest in charge.
Another change has also come for Father Gonzalez who has changed his name to Ogasawara, the Japanese name for the Bonin Islands. It is a warm and pleasant land where the Church goes on in spite of the vicissitudes of history.