I think the broad outlines are clear. Groberg designed a system that rendered spirituality entirely irrelevant: numbers, emotional manipulation, success. He put this system in place over about a year, starting in 1979, with it hitting stride in mid or late 1980. It produced huge numbers and was, by 1981, being exported to other missions. The human cost rose significantly, with excommunications, desertions, and an unusual number of cases of mental illness showing up in several missions by early 1982. Groberg left Tokyo in the summer of 1982 and the new mission president interviewed and excommunicated several APs (called MAs, mission assistants) and zone leaders. Salt Lake, having ignored letters and pleas from a number of parents--two of whom I Know met personally with Haight--finally stepped in. Kikuchi was "promoted" to SLC and a new GA was sent in to try to clean up the mess.

The details are less clear, certainly varying from person to person. But I do think that some of BigBadger's comments are a little too defensive and all-encompassing. First, he says that my totals are off in assuming that 25,000 Japanese during the Groberg years were baseball baptisms. I may indeed be wrong, but then he says that the number sounds reasonable--it is just my assertion that those were "baseball" baptisms or baptisms of people who didn't know they were Mormons--that was objectionable. I disagree. To begin with, I never said that baseball was involved in these baptisms. I did say that my number was roughly the number of people who went through the Groberg system and hence knew next to nothing of the church or perhaps not even that they were members. I stand by that assertion both in light of my own experience and because I was told in the early 2000s by a stake president in Tokyo, now returned to UT, that his missionaries spent a ton of time tring to track down many thousands of people--he said over 10,000-- and find out if they knew they were Mormon and wanted any association with the church. The mission, he said, was trying to "clear the books."

Badger also says that I am wrong to claim that there were virtually no retention efforts. I stand by that claim as well. Kikuchi told us specifically that we were to meet new converts exactly once, for one hour, after baptism and that the converts then became the members' responsibility. We got no credit on reports for any time beyond that and I was chastised more than once for spending more than an hour with people I had baptised. I remember in part a young man name Morohashi, whose grandfather or great grandfather had penned the massive Morohashi dictionary of classical Chinese that stands even today as the best treatment of that ancient body of literature in any language. So after we baptised the kid (it took a few weeks), I was ordered not to interact with him further than the one single meeting. I recall, and will never forget, the tears in his eyes when he realized that we could not meet him again. It was cruel and I feel terrible about it.

More generally, how could we missionaries afford to invest in people we'd baptised. Our rank, our status, our recognition all dependend on NEW contacts, lessons, and baptisms. If you spent time with converts, you had less time to do what your mission leaders demanded. Spending time with converts was a waste and it was punished through demotions, public humiliation, etc.

Next (and I apologize for making this long post a direct retort to BigBadger, who is a fine guy), is the question of whether baptising people in a single day was "routine." That probably depends on the definition of that word. But I'd call it routine if it happened, say, 20% of the time; and by that standard it was definitely routine. Indeed, that was the point of having portable fonts in apartments near railroad stations in central Tokyo. The six lessons were condensced into a single one hour lesson, which was taught immediately after meeting some teenager on the street, after which a ZL would be brought in (assuming one was available) for the interview, and the baptism would be performed. In this sense BigBadger's baptism of a man in a single day, after meeting him three times that day, would be a conservative approach, one testifying to Badger's personal ethics. But a lot of missionaries acted much faster than that; sometimes people were baptised without ever having entered a church. Sometimes sacrament meetings were organized in the missionary apartments so that they could check that box and fill up the font.

Finally comes the more theoretical question. Can a person be truly converted within a week or a day or an hour? The answer to that is clearly "yes" if you assume that the church is true and that conversions can occur instantaneously. But that is tautological. In fact Saul did not become Paul in a day or a week; the Bible is clear in saying that he had been fighting an internal battle over Jesus--kicking against the pricks--for a long, long time. We were told that true conversion could occur immediately but the Groberg system was set up on a different and more cynical foundation. As Kikuchi told me, if one convert out of 20 will stay active, the winning strategy is to baptise 40 or 80 or 100 and have 4 or 5 stay active. Kikuchi and Groberg were not looking for quality baptisms or expecting a pentacostal awakening: they were simply playing the probabilities, a practice that requires no divine intervention and hence puts God on the sidelines.

Again, apologies for making this so narrowly a response to BigBadger. I accept that his experience was different than mine, but I do think that what Kikuchi and Groberg said personally, what I experienced and is mirrored in the experiences of others, and what my work colleague the stake president in the early 2000s said are also valid. Indeed, when numerous sources paint a similar picture, it becomes a credible representation of the conditions under which most, if not all, missionaries worked.

If you want to see how Groberg viewed his system, try to track down his Ph.D. When he wrote that, people still thought he was a hero so it is pretty self-congratulatory.

Another good source is Journal of Mormon History, "Hasty Baptisms in Japan" by Jiro Numano, Fall 2010. His short essay contains the perspective of local church leaders, who were stunned that the new members knew little or nothing of church commandments and were immediately falling away.

Among the specific criticisms leaders in the Mitaka Ward were: missionaries arranging baptisms on weekday mornings in their own apartments and not telling the ward and branch leaders, organizing abbreviated sacrament meetings in their apartments so they did not have to wait for Sunday to take investigators. New converts not knowing the word of wisdom or sabbath observance. When ward leaders complained to Groberg, he threatened to withdraw the missionaries from those wards and organize his own branches and wards in the missionary apartments. Was this credible? Yes. I served as branch president in one such missionary-run branch. Also, some ward and branch leaders complained that a lot of baptisms were occurring within a single day of meeting the investigators. According to one disgruntled local leader, "he real goal was to have the person baptized before he or she was aware of it, just like a pushy salesperson does."

There is also a lengthy treatment of what happened in the Kichijoji ward. The sisters decided to improve the ward's fellowshiping efforts in 1982 and so contacted the new converts. A number of them had no idea they had joined the church, others complained that they had been "put into the water without understanding anything." Perhaps the most interesting case was the case of a man who was taught and baptised in the early 1990s. When they submitted his record it became clear that he was already a member of record, having been baptised during the Groberg era. He had no memory of that event.

And those are only the experiences of the members and converts. I strongly recommend reading that short essay by Numano, which also describes the effects of the Groberg disaster on Japanese missionaries.

I'm sure some missionaries in Japan in 1979-1982 behaved honorably and had good experiences. Some mission presidents protected their kids, more or less, and other kids were just extremely lucky. But it would be a mistake to extrapolate from those charmed existences to a genral pattern. For the majority of missionaries in Tokyo South and for a very large number of missionaries, members, and unwitting converts, the Groberg-Kikuchi era was an unmitigated tragedy. That word "tragedy," incidentally, comes from a BYU professor of Japanese literature, since moved on to an elite university, who taught and interacted with dozens of missionaries returning from Groberg's mission.

Former TS missionary here. I concur with Laozi. 1 day baptisms were a common place. That is what most of the Rah rah conferences that we had were about. Missionaries bragging about how many and how fast. I am glad that Badgers experiences were different. At least there was some sanity with a few I guess. For a minute I thought maybe Badger had a last name of Bates, Larkin, Johnson or some other MA that was trying to push up the ladder and kiss Grobergs arse. What a bunch of pricks some of them MA's were.

Luckily, I left shortly after the real craziness started and wasn't there at the pinnacle . '79-80 was my sentence. I wasn't a kiss arse or a numbers guy and as such I was banished to the farthest place from Tokyo for my final 6 months. And has been expressed, the high pressure, quick baptisms didn't work as well out in the countryside of Shizuoka ken.

I was also told more than once that we weren't to spend time with members or to fellowship. "Quit wasting mine and your time Elder. You were called to baptize. Not to fellowship or plant seeds" I was told in several interviews with the MP. Basically, if you couldn't have an investigator in the water quickly, drop em like a hot potato. Same after they were baptized. They became the members problem, not the missionaries. As a wet between the ears youngster and TBM I just followed orders as I thought my higher ups knew better than me. Even at that I just couldn't get into the pressure tactics and craziness that I witnessed from some missionaries. The portable fonts, the church meetings in the apartment, Elders harassing people at every train station. It just seemed so unethical to me.

About 10 years ago I was on a flight to Tokyo and out of the blue I met a member. I didn't know them but as we talked the conversation turned to why I knew Japanese. I usually just say that I lived in Japan when I was college age. Well the member put 2 and 2 together and realized I was an RM. When they discovered that I was a Tokyo South RM from the Groberg era they unloaded both barrels at me. "You missionaries at that time ruined so many people and caused so much trouble. Aren't you embarrassed about it?" Then they explained how much work they had been having to do trying to find people that were baptized at that time and trying to get the rolls corrected. To me that was evidence that most of the baptisms from that time were bogus. Sure your always going to have converts go inactive but I think the numbers Laozi puts up are close to accurate.

You mention Larkin. I know a Todd Larkin who was a missionary in Japan at around that time. Would you know if this Todd Larkin was the same? Can you give me some specifics about his behavior back then? I can tell you he is a bit of a tool today.

I have been following this sad story for years now and my jaw still falls to the floor whenever I am reminded of it.

The Japan case is extreme but clearly it shows the world the mormon missionary mill end product: lives ruined, fortunes squandered, promises broken, all at no expense to the tyrannical teamsters who crack the whip.

My own cousin Dale Shumway was just such an MP looking to pad his lds resume by being the biggest prick that his sick mind could ever dream up. Several posters here knew of him and his reputation throughout the state of New York.

I'm not the least bit ashamed to be from the same family however because it wasn't me who has besmirched the family name.

Mr. Shumway, sir, your honor... In following some internet trails, looking for more info on this topic, I stumbled on a thread over at postmo that had the following post. Does it ring any bells?:


"...are you familiar with Norman D. Shumway?

"I have known him and his family for many years and I can 'testify' that Norm Shumway has more influence on LDS Church policies in Japan than almost anyone else, including many of the Big 15.

"He is very mild mannered but works masterfully behind the scenes and his political connections have been exploited used by the Church to accomplish the Church's mission in Japan."

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mr. Shumway, sir, your honor... In following some
> internet trails, looking for more info on this
> topic, I stumbled on a thread over at postmo that
> had the following post. Does it ring any bells?:
>
>
> "...are you familiar with Norman D. Shumway?
>
> "I have known him and his family for many years
> and I can 'testify' that Norm Shumway has more
> influence on LDS Church policies in Japan than
> almost anyone else, including many of the Big 15.
>
> "He is very mild mannered but works masterfully
> behind the scenes and his political connections
> have been exploited used by the Church to
> accomplish the Church's mission in Japan."


Well ya doesn't has to call me sir. I work hard for my money thank you....:o)

But nah, I haven't kept close tabs on all the shummies, how could I? Grandpa Charley has over 30,000 mormon grandkids for chrissakes.

I have know of the great surgical pioneer Dr Norman Shumway of course but he is from the no-mo branch of the family.

I'd love to hear more about norman the morman who apparently had a hand in the godzilla meets the missionary horror flick.

Thank you laozi, for the back story of why things were the way they were on my mission.

There were a lot of rumors when I arrived in Tokyo North in '82.

Good to hear an honest account from one who was there.

I'm enjoying the discussion. Many thanks to Laozi and Mankosuki who have personal experience with the Groberg years.

Most of what they say is correct. Here are some specific observations.

First, I have never heard of Bates and Larkin. They were probably ahead of me. I think I've heard of Johnson. But he was ahead of me by a few months or more. If I'm thinking of the right guy.

I served under both Groberg and his successor, Presdent Inoue, who was totally different.

I don't know about the mental illness stuff. I'm not saying that didn't happen - I just don't know about it.

Excommunications? I knew of at least four - including two ex- companions of mine. I never really attributed those to Groberg's system, though.

As for the Sacrament meetings in the missionary apartments goes, that is totally accurate. I don't think I ever attended a Sacrament meeting in a regular church building. I dis spend time in Kichijoji which has a huge and beautiful building. But I never went to a Sacrament meeting their,. I lived in an apartment on the opposite side of the train station and we held Sacrament Meeting in our apartment. So there was virtually no contact with the existing members in Kichijoji.

My experience was far different than Laozi's in terms of retention efforts. I never heard anything about spending only one hour with new convert after baptism. I spent tons of time with new members. So did the missionary with more than 300 baptisms who came after me in one place. So I guess we just had different experiences in that regard. I'm glad I was never pressured to not spend time with new converts. That's really kind of perverse.

Another difference is the one-day stuff and the compression of the six lessons into one. I don't doubt Laozi - I'm just saying that was not my experience.

I do agree that the mindset was something like this -- if we baptize 100 people and five stay active, then that is better than baptizing two people who both stay active. So I agree with Laozi on that.

I never taught anyone without telling them about the word of wisdom. We had more than a few people who declined to be baptized because of that. But I guess I am learning for the first time today that maybe that went on elsewhere and I just didn't know it.

I was there from '80 to '82. So I may not have even overlapped with Mankosuki.

I will try to read the stuff you've referenced, Laotzi.

Again, thanks for the interesting discussion.

Thanks for your input bigbadger. The Kichijoji church building and adjoining building is the mission home now.

Does anyone remember being told not to discuss the "church meetings" in our apartments with anyone at home? Something in church policy about having branches inside of branches type thing. It was so strange to have the newly baptised members not attending the "regular" wards or branch meetings. Essentially we were thumbing our nose at the older members and then wondering why the got mad at us. We were baptizing all these people and then leaving them on an island by themselves and you wonder why the all disappeared?

Bet it was strange to live in Kichijoji and not attend church at the nice chapel. I wasn't in any area's that had a regular building. A couple that had some rented spaces, but mostly the last part of my time was just the Elders and new members having Sacrament meeting in the apartment. A church unto itself. lol

Side note: the member I met on the plane.....come to find out was a member in an area I served. We were practically neighbors at the time but we never met because we didn't have contact with members. Only the new converts in our own little "apartment branches".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2015 11:35PM by mankosuki.

Excellent point, Mankosuki, about baptizing a lot of people and then kind of leaving them on an island by themselves. That' a good comparison.

For what it's worth, I was never advised to not talk about the church meetings in our apartments with people at home. That's a new one to me.

Here are some quotes from a "church-supporting" website, http://www.rickety.us/lds/japan/

The webpage has to do with membership data in Japan through the years. Comments were then permitted. Here's the first reference to Groberg:


Jonathen says:
May 30, 2010 at 2:47 am
I am not sure if I should go into the details of the Groberg era, because there really was a lot of unethical things that went on under him. I think it suffices to say that he was a *little* too ambitious; here is a quote from his doctoral thesis, which he completed in 1986 and was awarded his doctorate in 1987; he wrote this soon after he served as the mission president of the Japan Tokyo South mission (1978-1981):

“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.”
-Toward a Synoptic Model of Instructional Productivity, Delbert H. Groberg, 1987, Page 51

Groberg was basically more worried about statistics than he was about converts who understood the Gospel and who would continue coming to Church. During the last 6 months of the time he was mission president, Groberg’s mission baptized 4,718 converts – more than 4 times the number of baptisms the second-highest-baptizing mission in the area under Elder Kikuchi’s supervision saw during those six months (Korea Seoul West Mission: 1,055 members), and almost 10 times the number of baptisms of the second-highest-baptizing mission in the country (Japan Okayama Mission: 542). Even now, the activity rate continues to hover around mid-20% in Japan largely as a result of the methods Groberg implemented, which damaged the church’s reputation in the country.

* * * * * * * * * *

Then we have the "I never saw anything like that!!" commet from "Douglas" that reminded me of BigBadger:


Douglas says:
May 17, 2011 at 9:40 am
I know this comment is not in direct reply to the immediate thread; however, it refers to comments made earlier regarding the Groberg era of missionary service in the Japan Tokyo South Mission. For years I have refrained from commenting with respect to this topic. I have refrained from commenting because I have felt that it would be a waste of my time to articulate the truth. I find many generalizations are made of the Groberg era and usually they are made from hearsay or from outright ignorance and lies. There are a few Mormon bashing websites where this topic is thoroughly discussed and most of what is said is comical. Frankly, if you did not serve in the Japan Tokyo South Mission during that time period you have no idea what happened. Because I was one of those missionaries who served under President Groberg from early 1979 to early 1981, I saw from start to finish the spike in baptisms that were performed. Yes, it is true there was great pressure to baptize and it is true that many elders saw the statistic as more meaningful than the convert, yet, to generalize and say that all missionaries fell among that category and that what occurred during that time period was, in effect, a black mark on the church is a falsehood, a misconception, and is wrong. Among those elders can be found tremendous stories of faith, diligence and hard work. I still have dear friendships with members I baptized during that time that have remained active and hold leadership positions in the church in their respective wards and stakes. As for how President Groberg handled his stewardship, that is between him and the Lord. The purpose of my writing this comment is not to make an attempt to defend his methods or disqualify them, it is only to state that much of what occurred in the Japan Tokyo South Mission occurred because of hard work, diligence and faith. Personally, I know of no instance of where an investigator was baptized before being taught all of the lessons and were properly interviewed. Did abuse of the system occur? I’m sure some did. Was it the norm? No! Were there elders who lost track of the concept that we were there to plant a testimony and convert the investigator? Sure. But there were many who just plain worked their butt off and never forgot what it meant to be a missionary!

Now, as to a comment I made earlier, it goes without saying that the pressure to baptize was extreme and President Groberg implemented various rules to keep the elders focused on this goal. There were some elders that were crushed under this pressure. There were some elders who lost focus of the individual versus the number. But there were just as many who didn’t and they also experienced great success. I believe some of those elders who were crushed under the pressure left the mission, fell away from the church, and have circulated many lies about what occurred. That is unfortunate. I also believe there are some elders that look back on that time and have regrets over how they handled certain situations. But, I believe that the majority of the elders that served under President Groberg look back at that time and have fond memories of the work they performed and the success that they had and are not ashamed of anything that they did because they know the truth of what happened and they know that they were part of something extraordinary.

In conclusion, I have written in generalities, not specifics; and lest you paint me into the corner of one of President Groberg’s mindless robots that “threw candy into the font and watched the kiddies jump in after it and called it a baptism” elder — which, by the way, never happened! — you have already misjudged me. During the time I served under President Groberg, I often struggled with some of the pressure to baptize that was applied on me as a missionary; and as I have held leadership positions in the church I have always remembered my experience as missionary for a guiding principle of what can happen when too much pressure is applied to achieve a seemingly worthwhile goal. On the other hand, as I was a missionary serving under President Groberg I also learned that I was capable of doing some extraordinary things if I worked hard and never gave up. That is a lesson that has proved useful to me everyday since I have returned home and I am eternally grateful that I learned it in the Japan Tokyo South Mission.

* * * * * * * * * *

Followed in a bit by this short, supportive comment:


Mike says:
May 2, 2013 at 9:12 pm
Thank you for your truths I was also there during the same time early 79-81 I had a similar experience and have to agree with your assessment, there are those who hear that’s when I served and roll their eyes and say oh you were one of them….. Well don’t use a broad brush to tarnish all the elders of that era… There were many great stories of conversion and faith, families and youth strengthened...

* * * * * * * * * *


Then comes a comment from an RM from a neighboring mission, not a all complimentary:

Paul says:
July 29, 2011 at 11:26 pm
I too was in Japan from ’79 thru ’81, but in the Okayama (now Hiroshima) Mission. What I vividly remember about that time was being constantly reminded of what faith was being shown in the Tokyo South Mission and how we needed to mirror their dendo style, etc. so that we too could post great numbers. The only problem we had was that our mission president would have nothing to do with the baptizing of a Nihonjin who had no clue what they were getting into. We had a few elders who tried to mimic the methods used in TSM and they did have some significantly increased numbers, but the retention rate of those new members were a joke. I remember transferring into a city as the DL where an egotistical ZL from Utah had baptized many young boys who had no idea what they had gotten into and the missionary didn’t even bother keeping records of who they were, the dates, ANYTHING! It took me forever to get things cleaned up there. Our mission president went as far as to have potential baptisms read expansive amounts of the BofM prior to allowing them to interview. It slowed things down significantly, but they usually ended up sticking around for a MUCH longer time. After arriving home to Mesa I met another ex-missionary who had been in TSM at the same time I was in Okayama. His stories of what was expected of them and what missionaries were willing to do to get baptisms made me ill to listen to. I felt so sorry for this guy because whereas my mission made me a stronger member, his experiences actually caused him to question everything he believed and he ended up leaving the church. There were times when listening to his stories that I wondered if I was just listening to the distorted views of a disgruntled member, but time and the internet have allowed me to find out just how truthful he was being. I’m sure that there were good things going on in the TSM during those years, but that mission and its president have been tainted for a long time to come.

* * * * * * * * * *

Finally, a brief comment perfectly on point, in terms of being anti-Groberg:


Choro says:
April 7, 2015 at 10:25 pm
I was a missionary under Groberg, and before him, Price. I can tell you from personal experience that Groberg was a jerk. I returned to Japan and had to deal with the aftermath of this used car salesman mentality. We literally had thousands of inactive in the ward in which I served in the bishopric. It was a nightmare. Elders sleeping with girls, dating, getting sent home. The church was severely damaged by a man whose only goal was to be made a General Authority at whatever cost. President Price was a gentleman and a spiritual giant and the contrast between the two men could not have been greater.

I'm going to add a few more points

First, I believe what BigBadger says. It's entirely possible he had a different experience than a lot of us others.

Second, the excommunications. The excommunictions in Tokyo South came because those mission leaders had been doing drugs and messing around with Japanese women. It was an open secret. Under great stress, people drank and told stories. Groberg and Kikuchi claim that they did not know about the misbehavior but that could only have been because they chose not to know. By the end all of this was well-known. Also, it was not just in Tokyo South that people were excommunicated for that stuff--it happened in a few of the other missions that tried to imitate Tokyo South. You saw a wave of maybe 10 or 12 excommunications, a knife fight between a member and a missionary in Sapporo, a few missionaries who simply moved in with local women and never acknowledged the church again, etc. So much happened between, say, January 1980 and the summer of that year that SLC HAD to look into it. It took the new mission president in Tokyo South, Groberg's replacement, about three weeks to figure out what was going on.

Mental health issues. Like excommunication, you can argue about the causes of the emotional trouble--but the same is true of homosexuality. Did Packer cause Stuart Mattis's death at that Stake Center? Very possibly not. Life is tough and people do self-destructive things. What I do know is that when institutions, or powerful people like Paker or Groberg or Kikuchi dramatically increase the pressure on people who are already in difficult situations, the odds of illness or death go up substantially. I hold those people responsible because they used their authority to push people over the edge.

I've already mentioned the cottage industry of psychotherapists in Provo and SLC who in 1981-1984 learned to specialize in RMs who had served in Japan. I've mentioned the Japanese literature professor, now at one of the great California universities, who saw the effects and called it a "tragedy;" the man who's wife says that he "no longer thinks there is anything the church is incapable of." That man is still a TBM, but his faith in the institutional church is minimal. But I'll add that I have seen some of the mental illness personally. I was in a branch where both junior missionaries felt so much pressure that they left early, one going straight to a state mental hospital and the other being interned a year later. Did the Groberg system cause those problems? Perhaps not. But both of those missionaries thought it did and even if they were wrong, there is no question that the church, supposedly a source of strength for members and missionaries, added greatly to their emotional burdens. And though not diagnosed, I suspect that a lot of us went home with PTSD or something approaching that.

I think what Choro (Elder) says in the final paragraph in elderolddog's is correct. That is the Groberg system as we experienced towards the end, when the duct tape and bailing wire were falling off.

I like it too. hehe

Just out of curiosity tonight I picked up my old journal I wrote back in the day. Only had to read a few entries to find something I wrote 35 years ago.
The entry was made the night following a conference earlier that day. I wrote that the conference was about "sales techniques" and that my interview afterwards left me pissed off by Pres Groberg and the psychological manipulation that I was supposed to bear.

Yes, every missionary has their own interpretation of the time they spent in Tokyo South, but you can't dispute the numbers from that time and not agree that it was a huge mind#%&#.

Also seen my total baptism number. Only 30. Guess I know why I wasn't one of the mission favorites. lol. I tried to have quality not quantity, but still I don't think any of them remained active. Maybe 1 or 2. I have no contact.

Attended a Sacrament mtg in Osaka a few years back just for grins. Only meeting I've been to in Japan since the mission days. Of course they do all the welcoming and introductions. I received all the ooh's and aah's when they learned I was a Tokyo South RM. Afterwards a sister came up to talk. She was also a Tokyo South alum. I couldn't remember her but we knew a few names together. She told me not to worry. All the bad things that happened on our mission wasn't our fault. We were just taking orders. So definitely she was aware of the things that happened. The stories aren't made up. Some people might not have the same experiences or led a sheltered few months, but the stories happened.

We were like the war wounded back in our wards and stakes. How do you tell people, believers that God's one true experience was horrific, the most cynical thing you can imagine? There was one refugee who after returning to the Moridor used to sneak into sacrament meeting just after it started, then run out after the meeting was over. He couldn't bear to meet people who wouldn't understand. There was the MP from Ts who approached me one night in a local college library and thanked me for telling the truth in my homecoming speech, of which he'd heard, and then disappeared. There were my parents, who were embarrassed by my tales and humiliated by my homecoming speech, the girlfriend who had waited but could not be with a man who'd had a bad mission.

I went away to a leading college where there were several of us in my particular department and ward. None of us talked about Japan or our missions. What do you say? If you're Winston Smith and have just had your encounter with rats, you've more or less compromised your principles or been punished for your independence (itself a sin since the leaders were God's chosen), how do you greet your colleagues? Your old friends and girlfriends? The experience, in my view, excommunicates everyone, literally, because you can no longer be part of your community. You've been through things that you simply can't talk about and that no one can hear.

There was no internet, no open community of disbelievers. We bore the burden more or less alone. I don't think people nowadays understand the isolation that people like us felt. Orwell understood; Winston Smith knew.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18005536

The above link is to a comment made by "TokyoBayer" on the straight dope board. He recapitulates an older exmormon thread, but I don't recall reading the following, from the now missiong old "ElderKikuchi.blogspot" posting:


"Something else Groberg did was give a special title to missionaries who were able to get large numbers of baptisms by doing “what hadn’t been done before.” Such individuals were called “Ensign” missionaries, and it was through their “diligent” efforts that the Japan Tokyo South mission was able to break the 1000-baptisms-per-month barrier.

However, as many returned missionaries from the Groberg Era have reported, these high-baptizing missionaries would often use illegitimate methods of attaining baptisms, such as going out and getting drunk at parties to make new friends, whom they would immediately baptize thereafter. Groberg eventually constructed “collapsible fonts and supplied one to each unit in which missionaries were working,” so even performing on-site baptisms at parties became feasible. Many of these missionaries admitted to using dishonest methods of conversion to Groberg, but he was apparently fine with whatever the means were as long as the missionaries were meeting their quota for baptisms.

The exceptional missionaries were invited to a monthly “recognition dinner at the mission president’s home,” while those who weren’t able to meet the quotas were chewed out in personal interviews with Groberg. The mission newsletter was turned into a stats sheet where those who were seeing the most success were praised as exemplary missionaries. The pressure and guilt that Groberg (and those above him) heaped upon the young men and women who were sacrificing 2 years to serve the church in Japan were almost unimaginable."

* * * * * * * * * *

Then TokyoBayer goes back to speaking for himself:

"Back to me. Our mission was getting about a hundred per month and Elder Kikuchi came down and read us the riot act. This was the first time I ever felt that a general authority was clearly wrong. I was translating his harangue into Japanese for the native missionaries, and I simply lied about what he was saying.

Halfway through my mission, Elder Kikuchi was fired, “reassigned” as they put it, and a replacement came from Salt Lake. He admitted that more than 90% of the people baptized in the previous five years were completely inactive. Our new assignment was to track them down and see if they wanted to simply pretend it never happened.

I had undergone a faith crisis and the used-car salesman approach appalled me. Even before I went home, all the people we had dunked were inactive. I had not wanted to push them so quickly but was overruled by my senior companions.

The idea of righting past wrongs invigorated me; I threw my heart into it, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I was much better at this task. I’m probably one of the few missionaries with a net negative number of baptisms."

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I love TokyoBayer's last line, about being a missionary with negative baptism numbers!

I have now come to terms with the TSM 'apologists.' There are a ton of elders I never met in my mission. A lot of unsavory practices could have gone on that I never heard about, just as some of the unsavory practices I engaged in were not widely known.

I also read that an elder with no baptism during a reporting week had his name listed with an asterisk next to it. These were weekly reports, and every week that went by, another asterisk was added. The fact that there were such elders means not everyone drank the Kikuchi-Groberg kool-aid.

I arrived after the Gorberg era but there were still a few guys left from his rein. I heard a lot of stories about "streeting." It sounded pretty bizarre; not anything like I thought a mission would be.

It wasn't candy they used at the bottom of the baptism fount, it was 100 Yen coins. The game was called "dive for the 100 yen coin."

I was in the suburbs of Tokyo and the branch had 130+ members on record and on a good week 6 would show up for church.

Like more than a few on this site it was in part my mission and mostly Japan that opened my eyes and saved me from "the church."

I was a missionary in Tokyo South from 1980 to 1981. I served under Groberg for most of my mission and had Inoue for the last few months. I arrived just as the baptisms started taking off, was there at the peak, and saw as the baptism bubble started to deflate soon after Groberg left.

I have been reading all the comments with great interest. What bigbadger writes mostly jibes with my own experience.

For the most part the missionaries I worked with were honorable men and women who were just trying to do their best in a very high pressured, stressful and rather unforgiving environment. I certainly never saw anything like "dive for the 100 yen coin."

The baptisms I was involved with (and I had around 100 - probably a bit below average for the era) were almost all young men late teens to early 20s. I remember working incredibly hard tracting on the streets in front of and around train stations, teaching many people a day, and even usually skipping dinner because that was when there were a lot of people on the street to stop. At the time, I believed in what I was doing and worked hard. Most of the people I worked with were probably the same.

I think I had a few baptisms that happened within a day or so, but the majority were probably a week or two. I worked in a couple of wards, a branch and a few "dendosho" that were the church units run by missionaries out of their apartments and under the control of the mission (the dendosho were definitely something unique to Tokyo South.)

Yes, we had baptismal fonts on the balconies of our apartments (a wooden structure with plastic lining.) In come cases that was because the apartment itself was the church in the area, but also definitely to make it easier to baptize. Actual ward buildings with fonts were not that many or close by. People who got baptized did have to go through the discussions (even if a condensed version), and had to be interviewed before the baptism, usually by another missionary who had not taught them. The global rule at the time was also that people had to attend church at least once before baptism (but more about that later).

Yes, the discussions were supposed to be condensed and in our own words. We were told to teach things like Tithing, the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity as "benefits" and "blessings" which meant that sometimes investigators probably did not fully realize what they meant as missionaries with imperfect Japanese language ability tried to put a "positive spin" on these commandments.

I, for one, certainly thought I had properly taught these commandments to those I baptized, but know that at least one man I baptized (who happens to be active to this day) didn't completely understand them all until he spoke to the bishop after his baptism (this man did not tell me this until years later). But then again this man went through a baptismal interview with another missionary where his commitment to the commandments was supposedly discussed.

I think the intense pressure to get people baptized, allowing missionaries to condense and summarize the discussions in their own words, the use of Church jargon (chie no kotoba, etc.) and the fact that the teaching was generally done by people who had limited Japanese ability certainly set up an environment for a lot of misunderstanding. In a normal situation there would be better checks and balances - longer teaching time, more exposure to existing Japanese members, etc. But under the intense pressure to baptize, this was not a normal situation.

There was a period during my time in the mission that people no longer had to attend church at least once before baptism (which was against the global rule, but the suspension of this rule was approved by Kikuchi and made the one-day baptisms possible.) However, after someone from the missionary department visited Tokyo South (he sat in on one of my discussions) to find out why we were suddenly baptizing hundreds, the rule returned that people had to go to church at least once before baptism.

Yes, a lot lies at the feet of Groberg and Kikuchi. But it goes higher than that. Anyone who was in Tokyo South has to remember the book full of speeches by Pres. Kimball given to each missionary telling us we had to "lengthen our stride" and spoke very specifically about needing to baptize thousands. Yes, many more "quality" converts is what what Pres. Kimball wanted, but the push for numbers came from the very top. Tokyo South certainly delivered the numbers, even if it might have skimped on the quality. But no one in Salt Lake was really willing to ask too many questions as long as the numbers were rolling in.

Yes, there were prizes and dinners with Groberg for baptizing. For years I had a keychain that I got at a dinner with Groberg after getting over 10 baptisms in a month. Even as a true believing Mormon at that time, I thought that was a little crazy.

I do not remember a ban on interacting too much with members or those we had already baptized. In fact, in the dendosho I worked in, since we missionaries were the church, lots of interaction with new converts was inevitable. The only thing that prevented me from seeing people I had baptized was when I was transferred to a new area.

Yes, what happened in Tokyo South impacted the church in Japan. But to be honest, the church is just not a good fit for Japanese society or culture and it was always destined to have a very limited impact there. Activity rates were low even before Tokyo South. I worked in Japan for many years after my mission and rarely came across missionaries, and most of the Japanese of my acquaintance knew little if anything about Mormons. Whether Tokyo South happened or not, the church was always destined to struggle in Japan.

Just after Groberg left, and Inoue came in, I remember two missionaries (top baptizers I believe) who were excommunicated for some kind of sexual issue. I clearly remember a mission conf. with a very angry Kikuchi after that. Why this did not happen until Inoue came in, I am not sure. However, I was personally aware of a situation during Groberg's time where, under normal circumstances, a couple of missionaries who probably would have been disfellowshipped at least, were instead sent home early for "medical" reasons (again, they were good baptizers). I had the distinct impression that Groberg wanted a clean record of not sending anyone home "dishonorably".

After my mission, I honestly did not like to talk much about my mission except with a very few people who had actually been there and would understand (kind of like people who have served in a war together, I assume.) I hated all the whispering and rumors about Tokyo South and reached a point I hesitated to tell people I had been there. I went to one mission reunion early on, and realized that - for the most part - I really did not want to see the majority again. Even now, it is painful for me to read my mission journals.

I think I know the professor of Japanese literature at BYU who went onto an elite university (mentioned above). He is in California, yes? I took several classes from him and he was a good guy. I may have talked to him about my experiences in Tokyo South, but do not remember.

I was in the Tokyo South Mission from 1978 to 1980, and was in one of the first groups to arrive in the newly formed mission. I saw it change from a relatively normal mission with low numbers – we actually knocked on doors, into the madhouse that has been described here. I returned to BYU after my mission, and with each group that returned the stories got more and more bizarre.

I witnessed all of what Laozi has described, and think his assessment is spot on, but I definitely understand what Bigbadger is saying.

Looking back, I think the missionaries can be roughly divided into four groups:

The Gamers. There was nothing spiritual about these guys - they were purely after numbers. These are the guys that I have no doubt would do the diving for coins trick. They were generally Groberg’s favorites.

God’s Army. They apparently believed they were doing God’s work, but to them the ends justified the means. Their motto seemed to be: “someone is better off being baptized and never coming back to church, than never being baptized at all.” They were very useful to Groberg.

Normal Missionaries. I think this was the largest group, and I include myself in this group. To varying degrees and with various degrees of success, we tried to follow Groberg’s directives while maintaining our integrity.

The Rebels. They saw Groberg’s programs as the crap it was, and wanted nothing to do with it.

Of course people’s perspectives are influenced by where, and with whom they worked.

I enjoyed this post, like BigBadger's. There is a great range of experiences in any mission, and the story you tell is entirely credible.

I do, however, have a few comments. First, I experienced both the "only one hour" fellowshipping rule and the dendosho rule. There was a contradiction between them, of course, but the solution seemed to be that if you were personally running a branch (dendosho) you were allowed more contact with newly baptised members. Even then, though, I took a lot of flack if my total branch responsibilities exceeded five or six hours a week. And I will never forget what I did to that poor Morohashi kid as I tried to live the one hour rule.

Second, I agree entirely about the responsibility for the disaster stretching all the way to Kimball. I'm going to write a post for the thread on the origins of baseball baptisms in a moment, but I believe things went crazy in Japan because you had Kikuchi, a GA, spreading the system beyond the confines of a single mission, a missionary committee under Haight that did not want to know the truth, and an enthusiast in Kimball. Without those coincidences the Tokyo South phenomenon would hever have spread across much of a country and into parts of of other countries.

Third, I know one of the very senior missionaries who was excommunicated for sexual misconduct. According to him, Groberg knew all about it. I personally saw enough craziness by overstressed kids--alcohol, drugs, sex--that was conducted openly to believe that yes, Groberg knew what was up. Hell, everybody did. These were open secrets.

Fourth, as I mentioned in another post, the alienation you mention, the desire not to discuss what happened in Japan, was very common. We were all mainly silent and then, in many cases, slid into inactivity rather than talk about the hell we'd been through. I called it possible PTSD, but your description is also apt.

Finally, yes, you know the professor I mentioned. By the time I knew him, many years later, I'm not sure he was such a nice guy. He was cynical, jaded, a bit harsh. He was active in the California ward, taught Sunday School, but taught the milk strippings version of Thomas Marsh's story in Sunday School. He would not take questions that Sunday, presumably because he knew he was lying. I think he just learned to turn off his judgment and live the TBM life. As his wife told me, he no longer had any faith that the church would do what was morally right in any particular situation.

I think you're right in distributing the blame as high as Kimball. It was his ridiculous false prophecies that created an environment in which cynical charlatans like Groberg could thrive, at least temporarily.

Thanks for your comments laozi. I have no doubt that you were in Tokyo South too. What you wrote rings true. I was just a naïve kid who looked at things through "believing" goggles so probably came at it from a different viewpoint. By any chance did you work in the mission office? I think I might know you, but dont want to break your anonymity with more details.

Hi, iwasthere.

Nope. I was not in the mission office. That alone might have killed me given what I felt about the mission.

There was, however, somebody sympathetic there. As you know, there were in the mission the company men and the rebels, the latter being people who considered the mission a lunatic asylum. Those rebels were spread throughout the mission (and other parts of Japan) and used to communicate among themselves in small clusters--though no one knew how far the network reached.

So when I had to go into the mission office for interviews to see if I should be excommunicated (not for anything worthwhile, just for publicly criticizing the MP and Kikuchi), one of the mission home staff came to see me. He smiled, asked if he could get me anything--some drugs, perhaps?-and left. He was joking about the drugs but we both knew that they were readily available and he really could have picked some up. The point was he recognized we were in wonderland, that I had done nothing wrong, and that my "apostasy" was for the mission president far more evil than booze, drugs or women. It was a quiet, ironic statement of support and it meant a lot to me.

Perhaps he was the person you are thinking of. But there could easily have been somebody else. There were a lot of people who shared our rebel views, though they were more discrete than me. I look back and think how f'ing naive I was. I was sure that if someone told the MP or Kikuchi or Haight what was happening, they would fix it--after all, that was the right thing to do.

Hey laozi,

I never really heard anything about drinking or drugs, but I would not have been surprised if it was going on among some. I was aware of something going on between two missionaries (male and female) but do not know how far it went sexually. I do believe that for Groberg, if you baptized a lot that covered a multitude of sins. And he may have separated out the "partying" baptizers from people like me who were just seriously plodding along but did not baptize as much. I did get the definite feeling that the assistants and zone leaders pulled a lot of strings when companionships were assigned.

I did hear rumors that the top baptizers were mostly baptizing young teenage girls (triffs as we called them.) I also had a junior companion who I had trained write me after he transferred, saying how surprised he was by the number of missionaries who were not serious (I was probably pretty strict when I trained him.)

As for the missionary in the office, near the end of my mission I heard a second-hand story, so am unsure as to its veracity. It was said that, using his position in the office, the missionary gathered materials about some of the odd things that were going on and dropped it off at the Tokyo hotel of a very senior visiting apostle in an attempt to try and warn church authorities. As the story goes, without looking at the materials, the apostle just handed it back to Kikuchi and Groberg. The missionary in questions was then supposedly harshly berated by both Groberg and his wife, and the missionary had evidence of this because he had secretly recorded them as they read him the riot act. It would not have surprised me if this was all true, but just the fact that a rumor like this was floating around says a lot about the mood in the mission at that time.

I have heard variants of what you say. I know that several missionaries told their parents what was happening and begged for help. Their parents then went to SLC, in multiple instances to Haight. The next thing that happened was Groberg and Kikuchi told everyone to shut the f up and keep all problems in-house, so yes, the apostle(s) did disavow responsibility and send the complaints back to Tokyo South and other Japanese missions.

I remember Faust visiting at about that time. He gave an unusual speech, saying that the number of baptisms was irrelevant and that he had only baptised one or two people. He said that personal conversion of the missionary was the goal. It was a breath of fresh air. But the missions never printed or distributed his speech, which they did for everyone else, perhaps because Faust was teaching blasphemy.

Even if Faust was trying to reduce stress, I believe he might have received special documents and have turned them over to Groberg and Kikuchi. That was the way things were done. And I have subsequently seen enough of Faust to know that he is not as ethical and spiritual as I thought in 1981.

Then again, it may have been some other apostle who received the documents in that hotel.

I never heard anything about drinking and drugs either, but I guess I was just a naive plodder.

My mission was 78-80. We heard unbelievable stories about the "success" they were having in Japan. And if only we had faith like those elders, we'd do the same in Germany. Just another stick to beat us with.

Looking at what's been revealed about then and there, "unbelievable" was the operative word. It's downright surreal.

There is a lot of valuable oral history here. Lots of us who were on missions in the late seventies experienced similar pushes for numbers and excesses from very ambitious mission presidents. Groberg may have been at one extreme, but this was a model that was pushed in many overseas missions.

tokyobayer here. Interesting that my post got picked up.

I was down in Fukuoka, so we didn't see the same kind of abuse. However, we had to help track down "members" who had moved back home and such.

I talked to a bishop afterward, and he was very much in the camp of those who felt if you baptize 100 and a few stick around, all the better.

He also turned it around on me by asking if I had gotten "funny" ideas from Asia.

I heard about drinking parties from a friend of a friend, an apostate TS missionary back around the mid 80s, but didn't really believe it at the time. We had the same Japanese class at the U, but I never talked much to him. Too bad, he probably had more stories.

I was pretty much out after my mission. The final straw was that I went back to one of my areas after my mission and taught English for a bit. We missionaries had convinced ourselves that the Japanese members were really spiritually pure. Seeing them from a non-missionary perspective, they were a strange lot.

I just had my wife (she is in academia) download the Groberg PhD. It's bloody 500 pages long!

I was thinking of scanning through it, now I'm no so sure. LOL