I have seen several comments talking about a guy named Groberg and 'the Groberg years' in Japan over the last year or so of lurking. What's that all about? all i can get out of it is that he must have been evil.

My brother was in the Tokyo South Mission. From a blog on the subject. Steve Benson has also written about this before here.


Most of us are familiar with missionary techniques for increasing numbers: quick teaching and baptism of children and teens and going after those “in transition,” such as people who have experienced a death in the family, loss of job, or other instability. In his excellent article, “I-Thou vs. I-It Conversions: The Mormon “Baseball Baptism” Era,” Michael Quinn explains how pressure for numbers drove these tactics, reaching their nadir in the era of the “Baseball Baptisms” in Britain in the 1960s.

At least I thought that was the nadir until I read about “The Groberg Era” in the Tokyo South Mission in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1978 the new mission president, Delbert H. Groberg (brother of general authority and author John Groberg) arrived in Japan and met with Yoshihiko Kikuchi, who had recently been called as the first Japanese general authority. Groberg wrote in his journal:

"Elder Kikuchi came out to our home and we talked from 3:30pm until 7:00pm. He really has high expectations of me. I had thought that 10 times as many baptisms as they are getting now would be a good goal to shoot for (about 10,000). Before telling him, I asked him what he felt I should do. He mapped out the progress as he expected and it turned out to be 25 times as much as what is currently happening minimum! (And he stressed minimum!) That seems like a lot, but I believe we can make it."

To achieve these goals, Kikuchi and Groberg implemented what they called the “Investigator Extraction” method. A former missionary who served at that time explains how it worked (note that his choice of words reflects his cynicism and disdain for the “method”):

"Missionary apartments were relocated to areas near major pedestrian shopping and transportation traffic centers.

In Tokyo, existing chapels were used as teaching centers, and when distance from a chapel rendered that option unfeasible, offices were rented with the intent to use them for the same purpose and as branch meetinghouses. In outlying areas, missionary apartments were to be used as teaching centers as well as branch meeting-houses.

Missionaries were no longer to waste their time tracting [going door to door]. They were instead instructed to use the major traffic centers as a resource pool, and make street contacts through a variety of cheap tricks, the most popular being to offer English lessons and tutoring (imagine a 19-year-old farm boy tutoring someone in English…).

Missionaries were to target teens, young adults, and needy types in their street contacting. These were “easy marks.” They were to take advantage of a certain Japanese reluctance to directly disagree or contradict in face-to-face interaction, and were given techniques on how to establish an easy rapport and how to get the “mark” to constantly agree with the missionary. A pattern was developed so that the missionary could steer the conversation and control it. Then the missionary would get the “mark” to agree (easy by that time) to go with him/her and talk briefly about Something Very Important.

The missionaries were to MAKE CONTACT AND NOT LOSE IT. They were to bring the “mark” to whatever teaching center had been designated and begin indoctrination immediately.

The six missionary discussions were rewritten and condensed into six five- to ten-minute presentations. It was dramatized and made very charismatic. Missionaries were advised that they could “teach” all six discussions at once “if so directed by the spirit."

Following the mini-discussion presentation, missionaries were instructed to challenge the “mark” to baptism, immediately.

If the “mark” accepted, missionaries were to contact their zone leaders and schedule a baptismal interview. Zone leaders were never more than ten or fifteen minutes away by train.

Apartments/teaching centers/meeting-houses were all equipped with makeshift “baptismal fonts.” If the “mark” accepted and passed the “interview” (who would not? almost nobody failed it!), the “mark’ was loaned a white jumsuit or shift, and baptism immediately followed the six lessons and interview, witnessed by the Zone Leaders. Confirmation followed, again witnessed by the Zone Leaders.

The entire process (contact to confirmation) was timed and refined until it was streamlined down to approximately 1.5 HOURS. It could be–and most frequently was–all done at the same time.

The missionary was to exchange contact information (address and phone #) with the “new member,” give them a Book of Mormon, and give them a small map showing them where church services were held, times, etc.

The contact was “allowed” to depart.

New baptism statistics were posted weekly in the mission newsletter, to increase the level of competition among the missionaries.

Missionaries were required to meet regularly for “mutual encouragement” meetings (rah-rah sessions). Zone or All-Mission Conferences were scheduled to raise the excitement level even further and sustain it at fever pitch.

Never let up on the pressure to perform."

Another man who served in the same mission writes:

"These are deep wounds, and I am touched and saddened to see how vivid the memories are for some of us.

A few additional details. Regarding the Groberg/Kikuchi model, the basic premise was a relentless focus on sheer numbers. If one in 100 (?) who hear the lessons are baptised and one in three (?) converts remain active, then teaching 300 lessons produces one active members. It follows that teaching 30,000 lessons must result in 100 active members. This quantitative logic is all that matters, since no individual human is valuable enough as a mere child of God to warrant personal attention. The rule, effectively, was to dump Japanese in the waters of baptism and then let the Lord sort them out.

Manipulative techniques. I should add … that not all of these practices came directly from Groberg and Kikuchi; a lot were innovations by missionaries who functioned under intense pressure. The leaders retrospectively claim that they did not know some of these things were happening–and that may be true, though I think there was, and still is, a lot of intentional ignorance.

With that caveat, we were taught to teach only young people, ideally men between 18 and 22, because they baptized the fastest. We were explicitly ordered not to teach families because they took too much time; and I know of one instance in which a companionship was punished for insisting on teaching a family. The entire lesson plan was condensed into one hour, and during that hour each missionary was to shake hands with the investigator at least ten times. This worked because Japanese don’t normally shake hands and the sudden, repetitive physical contact tended to facilitate persuasion. During that hour we were also to speak frequently in broken English, saying things like “berry, berry goodo” because that made the investigator feel like he was engaged in an English language conversation. Finally, once the baptism was done we were ordered to see each convert a maximum of one time, since it was now the members’ responsibility to develop and maintain a human connection. Friendships between missionaries and Japanese converts were virtually proscribed.

Of course, the missionaries were manipulated with equal cynicism and zeal. Status and approval were based on the number of baptisms a person could perform. This gave an advantage to the charismatic, strong personalities at the expense of quieter, often more sensitive and spiritual missionaries. The former rose fast through the hierarchy, becoming zone leaders and APs while the less forceful characters were continually condemned as inadequate, a disappointment to God, because they did not produce enough. Nor did personal “worthiness” matter. Missionaries turned to their old vices to let off steam; and if the leadership found out about their chemical or other indiscretions, the consequence was a demotion followed–assuming that the requisite number of baptisms was achieved–by immediate promotion back into the ranks of the godly. There was thus very little connection between the moral and ethical codes of our childhood congregations and the definition of success in the mission field.

So what happened as a result of all of this? Baptisms skyrocketed for a couple of years, until Groberg was replaced and some of his senior missionaries excommunicated for things that he had not wanted to see. The Church then tried to turn back the clock, but the prominent comedian Takeshi Beat made “accept baptism!” routines a staple of late night television and Japanese people, for various reasons, lost much of their interest in American culture and religion. As the rate of new baptisms fell through the 1980s and 1990s, one or two mission presidents tried to resurrect parts of the Groberg system but, frankly, the moment had passed and there was no Kikuchi to provide support.

Meanwhile, the missionaries returned to their home communities having been through hell. These were the years of Spencer Kimball, when “every young man must go on a mission and he will like it,” so our families and friends could not comprehend the stories we had to tell. We were shunned, avoided by members who were uncomfortable with us and in many instances condemned by local leaders who thought that we must surely be to blame for our pain. After all, the Lord’s Church could not possibly have done what we described. Some missionaries and their families complained to apostles–I am aware of two such conversations by friends’ parents–so it is pretty clear that SLC knew the depth and breadth of the problem. But rather than reaching out to help the missionaries or, at the very least, warning bishops and other leaders of the difficulties the RMs were bringing home, the brethren in SLC swept the whole thing under the rug, leaving the isolated and traumatized missionaries to work through the social ostracization, self-condemnation, and disillusionment in solitude.

Even today we cannot share these stories with Mormon friends. The truth is that the one thing the religion can never forgive–other than diety’s intransident decision, contrary to the urging of his prophets, to create a certain percentage of his children gay–is the arrogance of those who dare to have been harmed by the Church. It would be inconvenient and embarrassing, after all, to ask leaders to admit mistakes…

Let the Lord sort it out.

Another missionary describes how President Groberg “bullied, forced, coerced, threatened and at times, even blackmailed missionaries to perform ‘miracles.’” I used to say that it’s impossible to be too cynical about the LDS church, but this shocked even a hardened cynic like me. The words of another survivor of that mission sum things up for me: “I came home feeling robbed of spiritual nature of the experience, having been reduced to nothing more than a salesman with daily and weekly quotas that I couldn’t possibly live up to.”

I’d like to think that such practices are behind the church, but I suspect they aren’t. Similar methods were used in the England Manchester Mission in the 1990s. It’s a fair bet that it’s still going on, most likely in areas where the church has recently begun missionary work, such as Eastern Europe and Africa.

Also here: http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon555.htm

England Manchester in the 90's? I had no idea. In the early 80's it reached epic proportions with Ellis Ivory. motto: "The more mud you throw at the wall, the more sticks."

I heard stories of baptizing underage kids, animals and even looking up names at the cemetery. Unless you were in that situation you can't imagine the pressure to baptize.

One method that was touted was the "walk in". You knock on the door and then as soon as it opens you just go right in, sit down and start teaching. There were stories about putting your foot in the door and shoving your way in. When anyone cast doubt on these methods there was ALWAYS someone who could say, Yeah but if we even get ONE baptism from that, we have saved a soul and how great shall be our joy! Plus, they could always come up with examples of super awesome members who wouldn't be mormon if the missionaries hadn't been 'so bold'.

I remember a bishop speaking in stake conference about how some of the methods might seem extreme to 'certain' members but he was so grateful because he was a product of a baseball baptism.

In one of the more successful wards in Manchester we had almost 900 members on the rolls but averaged only around 120 active.

I also remember the madness of the early 80's in Manchester, it started under Ivory and continued under his successor Parley Joe (Livingstone).

This really sickens me. Oh yeah the Mormon church is so true!

Is this for reals? Oh my gosh!

I know that my missions president's predecessor (I served in France) was notorious for pushing fast baptisms and huge numbers. This would have been late 80s early 90s.

Disappointed to hear this about Kikuchi. He spoke to us in the MTC.

Is it one of these Groberg brothers who was the subject of the movie The Other Side of Heaven?

watch the movie. I can't remember the title now, but it explains things pretty well.

the other side of heaven http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250371/

I don't get it. How does that explain his MP brother in Japan? Lots of crazy shit?

While not directly connected, this is the same guy.

Nope. It was a brother.

Thanks for the info - I incorrectly assumed they were the same person.

It took decades for me to sort out the meaning of what happened to us, but I now see the experience as evidence of (among other things) the banality of evil.

Groberg and Kikuchi are not substantial men, not men of principle. Kikuchi was basically a multi-level marketer of moderate intelligence; he was going nowhere in the world. But his combination of enthusiasm and an ability to scream his testimony while weeping endeared him to church leaders. The church excused his eccentricisms as "part of Japanese culture, which we don't understand." So they overlooked his obvious flaws and gave him power. Groberg was young, ambitious, sure of his own superiority. But he too was headed nowhere before he got his chance at fame and fortune.

For men like that, the approval of one's leaders is proof of their own virtue. There is The Cause, which is righteous. The leaders in The Cause want lots of baptisms. If I use my techniques, ignoring any qualms I may have, I please my leaders and advance my own interests. Everybody wins, which proves that my actions are ethicallycorrect. Surely this is how mid-level bureaucrats in Nazi Germany justified what they were doing. If you don't have strong moral convictions, convictions beyond "doing what pleases my community," then gratifying your bosses and advancing your own interests seems obviously right.

Kikuchi has no soul. I had an interview with him toward the end of my mission and told him what the missionaries were suffering. He wept, told me he'd never known about those things, and promised to change the rules that were causing the problems right away. But the next day he tightened the rules and procedures that were doing so much damage. I think he was sincere on both occasions: he wept empathetically with me and then did the opposite the next day, weeping and shouting his testimony to a conference. Twenty years later he wrote a letter to me apologizing for what happened to us missionaries, saying he never knew about it, and then defended every one of the problems. My belief is that he simply lacks the moral compass necessary for honesty and consistency.

Groberg is a little more complicated. I'm told he eventuallly realized that what he had done was wrong; and after we on RfM discussed his Ph.D. thesis, which described what he did in Tokyo South and was then available online, it quietly was pulled from the internet. I think he feels regret. But he then went on to Franklin-Covey, giving motivational speeches and the like, proving again that he lacks any substance beyond personal advancement, selling snake oil, and presenting image above reality. Did Franklin-Covey do anything to make the world better? So he too never escaped the manipulation that was the hallmark of his mission presidency.

The other piece of this is of course the Quorum of the Twelve. Elder Haight, who ran the missionary program, knew exactly what happened--at least as early as six months before Kikuchi left. How do I know? Because two dear friends had their parents, personal friends of Haight, go and explain it to him. But he and the rest of the Twelve never took responsibility, never reached out to the missionaries, never helped them heal. When one of my friends subsequently had an interview with him, Haight "showed great empathy short of accepting any responsibility."

I don't think Haight or Groberg or Kikuchi are immoral; I can't see them stealing candy from a convenience store or cheating on their wives or lying on their tax returns. They are conventional men with conventional moral scruples. But if you put people like that in a totalitarian movement, which demands everything and claims a superior morality while also giving money and fame and influence; that gives simple people a chance to lose themselves in a greater cause, such men are capable of great evil.

That's what Hannah Arendt meant when she described "the banality of evil," the fact that much of the harm done by immmoral organizations and movements is actually implemented by little men with conventional moral codes. These men are not strong enough, not wise enough, to realize that what they are doing is destructive. They faithfully go about their business the best they can, convinced by their own prosperity, the advancement of The Cause, and the approval of their superiors that they are doing what is right. Then when the war is over and the sins revealed, they claim that they never knew, that they and their society had been misled and deceived by their leaders, and that they personally were victims of the system. Just following orders. . .

Great analysis. Thanks for that. I read the book when for a class at byu and never could figure out exactly what she meant. Nor did it occur to me that I had witnessed and even taken part in a similar if not so extreme experience.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2014 04:39PM by onendagus.

Very well said! I agree. Whether it is in the boardroom at Enron or Worldcom or Lehman Brothers, or in the offices of Madoff Investments, or in government offices in Pyongyang or Damascus, or in the solemn assembly room of the SL temple, organizations that impose or take on the characteristics of cults can anesthetize the ethical and moral consciences of their operators.

HaHa!!LOL that is so funny and True about Kikuchi screaming! He spoke to us in the MTC, and he was so loud that we were all covering our ears and laughing at how ridiculous it was. Thanks for the memory.

Wow, great post!

A mission companion told me that he knew Kikuchi and that he was a very nice man, which it sounds like you somewhat agree with. I think this missionary must have known the weepy side of Kikuchi that you mention but not the other side.

The nature of evil, indeed. Fascinating stuff you write. And it does seem that the low level followers are the ones who do the dirty work. Did Hitler even personally kill anybody? Maybe, I don't know. But certainly most of the atrocity was done by the mid-level guys. Charles Manson claims that he never killed anybody, his girls did it. Pol Pot purportedly was mild mannered. Fascinating stuff.

Thanks for sharing that. I, too, had wondered.

Funny to now know that my husband's first conversation with Americans (as middle school kid) must have been with a pair of those poor missionaries. He had to go to a prep class, so he left in the middle and wasn't quite comfortable with the baptism idea so he never went back. He was clearly less traumatized than the poor missionaries.

I lived in Japan for nearly a decade from around 1986. The type of intimidation and humiliation and performance pressure I see hinted at here was very common in Japanese companies at the time. Short of hard-core physical violence, managers seemed to be able to get away with all kinds of abuse, especially it seemed in sales. And teachers were known to hit their students, too. (My husband's friend went deaf in one ear from such a blow, and the teacher just got 6 months off with pay.) I could tell some awful stories, and I am guessing Kikuchi may have been a product of his experiences in Japan. Not that it's excusable in the context of young missionaries there for service and spiritual growth.

So I want to know what happened after that. My BIL gets a haunted look when something triggers memories of his mission in Japan, must have been around 85-88, somewhere outside the biggest cities - maybe Fujuoka. I can see any mission being traumatic, but was this stuff still going on by that point?

Two replies.

I don't know what happened to your BIL. There was a mission president in northern Japan who in the late 1980s tried to resurrect the Groberg system. I think his name may have been Muntz or something like that. But in any case, Japan is a wonderful but very different country and it is stressful for lots of missionaries at the best of times. And there were also elements of manipulation and abuse, as in all missions, at the best of times.

On Japanese business and educational culture, you are of course correct. Those things happened in decades past and I still would hesitate to put my kids in Japanese schools. But people really exaggerate the less desireable aspects of that country. I know many, many fine, moral Japanese men and women. What Kikuchi did was not Japanese; it was more universal than that, more like the excesses of American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam; or the systematic brutality of Argentina during the junta period; or the Indian caste or British class system; or American racism. These things are the universal heritage of mankind.

I love Japan. My kids, though not Japanese, speak the language and revere the culture. Young Japanese men are now, generally, better fathers than American men. And I celebrate the way that Japanese, both individually and as a nation, rejected--laughed at--what Groberg and Kikuchi did. Education and business did tend to be regimented and harsh back in the day. But Japan is also a land that tolerates eccentrics, and eccentrics are the sort of people who stand up against mass movements. The bottom line is that Groberg and Kikuchi doomed the church in Japan; they started its long decline.

To be fair though, Japanese society and attitudes have changed since the 80s (or before that). Corporal punishment in schools were still common back then, but now, not at all. There are harsher penalties and stronger social backlash regarding corporal punishment, and the younger generations do not see it as an appropropriate way for discipline.The generation of teachers or managers that believed in heavy pressure or corporate punishment are mostly retired or near retirement. That doesn't mean that it never happens, but it happens a lot less than 30 to 50 years ago. There's actually an increase of obnoxious parents though (so-called 'monster parents', similar to 'helicopter parents' in the US), so I feel sorry for teachers who have to deal with the antics from the parents.

There are still some companies that have that old-fashioned mentality that you describe, but there are far fewer of them than several decades ago.

I just came back from a long trip to Tokyo - definitely much has changed. They are still good, honest hardworking people for the most part, putting in longer hours at every age, even Elementary school. But I didn't hear any crazy abuse stories.

Laotzu Wrote:

> it was more universal than that, more like the
> excesses of American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq,
> and Vietnam; or the systematic brutality of
> Argentina during the junta period; or the Indian
> caste or British class system; or American racism.
> These things are the universal heritage of
> mankind.

I want to take vigorous exception to your remark, "excesses of American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam," and equating it with events as horrid as the "Dirty War" in Argentina and the systemic oppression of the Hindu caste system.

Every war has its wretched characters and tragedies, both deliberate and inadvertent, but the U.S. efforts abroad were conducted with an overall respect and care for the native populations. Of course there were civilian casualties, and I in no way dismiss them as "collateral damage." But the usual tactical policy is to pass on a target if a non-combatant is exposed to fire, just as a policeman is trained to not discharge his weapon if a civilian is in the line of fire.

William Calley, and others, were courtmartialed for their crimes. After the war, the North Vietamese remarked on how shocked they were that the Americans would do such a thing (courtmartial an officer for civilian deaths).

Just look at the brutality of wars in various current global situations, where Americans are not involved.

______________________________________________________________

Otherwise, I really appreciate your fascinating and detailed posts, and thanks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2014 12:38PM by caffiend.

Caffiend,

I largely agree with you. It is true that some societies are less prone to systematic atrocities than others, and that the old Germany and the old Japan were particularly vulnerable on that score. The United States and the modern Japan are considerably less so.

I do think, though, that people in the US are also capable of participating, in good conscience, in systems that are evil. A better parallel than the ones I offered above might be the American systems of abuse of Native Americans in the 19th century and extending through the reservation system, the Mormon home placement program, etc., in the 20th century. Another case would be the administration of racial segregation in the south , a process that would have been impossible without the cooperation of thousands, tens of thousands, of average white citizens. Still another would be the internment of Japanese citizens during World War Two. None of these examples rise to the level of Nazism or Japan in the 1930s and 1940s but they do attest to the same human capacity for thoughtless, routine evil.

To bring this back to the Groberg context, there were many, many Americans who supported what Groberg and Kikuchi did. There were several mission presidents, several mission counselors, some bishops and branch presidents. There were assistants to the mission presidents and zone leaders, some of whom I personally saw shut down their consciences and as an act of will decide to do what they were told even if it appeared to be evil. And above Kikuchi were general authorities--and even David B. Haight--who received enough reports to know the general situation. In all these cases a combination of personal ambition, the visceral need for approval from one's superiors, and a willingness to believe that numerical success must surely be proof of goodness motivated people to do what they knew, deep in their hearts, was wrong.

So yes, in my original post I put the point too strongly with regard to Americans. Americans are subject to the same human weaknesses but generally don't take matters to the extremes that I implied. Societies that tolerate or encourage eccentricity are somewhat protected against the banality of evil.

Thanks for the answers. I just found this. I hope it is allowed to be posted here. at first i thought it was pro Kikuchi or written by him-

http://elderkikuchi.blogspot.com/2010/05/heading-another-heading-row-1-cell-1.html

Hahaha yeah that site is definitely from the exMormon perspective. That is my blog from around 2010. I haven't added any new posts since then, but there are a few articles on there about some of the shady things that TSSC has done in Japan.

Thinking about this topic over the last couple of days brought back more memories. Most of the emphasis in our discussion has been on the proselytizing techniques, manipulation of Japanese peopl, etc. Here are some of the pressure tactics applied to the missionaries.

1) P-days. Pressure gradually increased on missionaries to voluntarily skip P-days and proselytize instead. By late 1981 or early 1982 P-days were officially removed in at least some of the Japan missions. Missionaries were given until 10:30 AM to get laundry and everything else done and then had to start the usual 11 hour workday.

2) Companionships. Kikuchi later denied knowing about this, but it is true. Missionaries were put in competition with their companions to get referrals and teach lessons, so they split up and worked alone. Often this meant taking different floors in apartment buildings and being separated for one or more hours at a time. The outcome was predictable.

3) Daily reporting. You know how missionaries everywhere must report their numbers weekly to the mission home? In Kikuchi's Japan, we had to report to the mission home by phone twice a day. If your numbers were down or you sounded depressed, the APs would harrass you over the phone. . . Daily.

4) Spying. When the mission home thought someone was disgruntled or otherwise troublesome, they would assign one missionary in a branch to spy on the target or on the whole branch. Often the spies were told to sneak out of the apartment at night and phone the mission home from a pay phone.

5) Totsuzen homons. In some missions the president and his APs would make unscheduled, unnanounced "suprise visits" to missionary apartments. They had keys and would simply enter the apartment at 5:30, 6:00 or 6:30 AM looking for contraband or over-sleeping. These visits occasionally became confrontational because the branch missionaries felt harrassed--and often they were. I was in a branch that experienced this; the visit almost ended in violence as two harried junior companions exploded at two aggressive and condescending APs in the presence of the mission president.

6) Roller-coaster promotions. All mission status--senior companion, district leader, zone leader, AP--was based solely on baptism numbers. If you got the required number, you were promoted at the next monthly transfer day. If you fell below the number, you were demoted and publicly humiliated. If you got drunk and were caught, you'd be demoted but if you then got enough baptisms, you would be promoted back the next month. What this meant was that people bounced up and down in rank and paid more attention to the numbers game than to anything else, including normal behavioral standards.

The biggest baptisers became the highest leaders, meaning that the quiet, earnest spiritual guys were always on the bottom. The ex-high-school jocks ran things, often treating the quiet people poorly. Groberg used to harangue the low-baptisers mercilessly; Flattop wrote about an interview like that, when he was called a failure and many other things. These were very common: if you didn't produce the numbers, God was angry at you, which meant that you were morally inferior.

7) The blind eye. The apostles should have known that things were going wrong. Baptisms in Tokyo South went from 180 or so per month before Groberg to nearly 2,000 at the peak. A ten fold increase? Groberg was ten times as spiritual, as valiant as his predecessor? It was obvious that something needed investigation. Then there were the horror stories in missionary letters home, the people leaving their missions (rare back then), the calls to apostles. . .

But the church ignored all the warning signs and only stepped in when Groberg went home and the new mission president interviewed the APs and the zone leaders. He found that a number of these guys were now drinking, doing drugs, or sleeping with Japanese women. So he excommunicated a bunch of mission leaders and told the church what was going on. That's when Kikuchi was replaced (in May or June, if I recall correctly, 0f 1982).

Groberg and Kikuchi claimed that they had no idea what was going on. But that is nonsense. The whole system was set up as a pressure cooker to force the missionaries to perform, and it was obvious that they were breaking under the strain. But Groberg and Kikuchi chose to ignore everything but the numbers of lessons and baptisms: they said that God was blessing the mission with conversions and that that proved that everything was right.

Something like that was happening in Salt Lake City, of course. To Haight and the others, the high number of baptisms seemed like the fulfilment of prophecy and the beginning of the church's worldwide triumph. So why look a gift horse in the mouth? It was only when things started to fall apart in Tokyo and elsewhere that the apostles decided to step in--and then they only tried to stop future harm, not to help the missionaries who had been, in some cases, deeply injured by Groberg and Kikuchi.

I "served" under a man who joined the Nazi party before the war and the SS as soon as he could while the war was on. We were regularly berated for our lack of faith because of the "turn around success" stories coming out of Japan. This was in '78-80. Reading the "facts on the ground" here of what it was like then, I almost feel like I got off easy under Feldwebel Flade. Almost.

I grieve for all of us who were abused by what can only be described as an evil machine.

By the way, several years ago, before it was pulled from the Internet, I dished out $50 or however much it cost at the time to purchase Groberg's doctoral thesis. Does anyone know if this is copyrighted material, or if it is okay to share this over the Internet?

Ok or not, host that thing on thep(eye)r@teb@y or some other tor rent server.

Rodolfo and Laotzu: a very informative thread.


This is a keeper, I think.

I happened to be a missionary in the Kobe mission during the Groberg years. We were told how the Tokyo South mission was experiencing unprecedented growth and incredible baptism numbers.

If they could do it, we could. Or at least that is what we were told. New programs were instituted, new ways of doing things tried.

Alas, our mission president was a decent man, so not much came of it. Through the grapevine we heard how the whole Tokyo South thing unraveled. Susequently things went back to a more normal abnormality.

My mission was hard. Being a salesman for a product which was the greatest product in the universe was difficult. Few were even casually interested.

That being said, Japan was wonderful and the Japanese people and culture were great.

Carl Toro

I have to remember not to click on these Tokyo South threads. Brings back to many bad memories. Entire mission under Delbert H Groberg.

My first time reading about this topic as well. Wow. The entire conversion process that was (is?) used on the Japanese is disgusting. Taking advantage of Japanese customs to manipulate the residents is beyond deplorable. The use of broken English is especialy offensive.