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118THE EPISCOPALIANSAlthough sharply critical of the concessions contained in the Munich Pact of 1938,Tucker insisted throughout 1939 that the United States should not be drawn intothe conflict in Europe and Asia. Several weeks after the German invasion ofPoland, a group of Episcopalians under the leadership of John Nevin Sayre, apriest who was active in the interdenominational Fellowship of Reconciliation,met in New York and formed the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship. This organization,which contained about eight hundred members at its peak in the mid-1940s,offered strong support to conscientious objectors throughout World War II. 25By early 1941, however, when Nazi Germany seemed to be on the brink ofvictory over England, the majority of Episcopalians realized that they could nolonger refuse to help their traditional allies in the British isles. Several monthsbefore the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some Episcopal bishops began to callon fellow church member Franklin Roosevelt and the U.S. government to cometo Great Britain’s aid. At that time, Tucker described Hitler and the Nazis as “acancerous growth” that had to be removed by force of arms. He not only decriedHitler’s murderous campaign against the Jews but also called for efforts to provideasylum for Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi forces in Europe. After the UnitedStates formally entered the war against the Axis powers in December 1941,Tucker envisioned the expanding conflict as a judgment by God on the sins ofall nations—a bloody contest into which Americans should enter with an attitudeof penitence rather than self-righteousness or vindictiveness. 26The war in the Pacific had a particularly devastating impact on Episcopalians’missionary work among Asians. In the Philippines, the two American bishopsand almost all of the Episcopal missionaries were imprisoned after the Japanesecaptured the islands. 27 Since Episcopalians had also been involved in evangelisticefforts among Asian Americans on the West Coast, the wartime internment ofcitizens of Japanese descent similarly disrupted the church’s domestic missionaryactivities. In January 1942, Presiding Bishop Tucker appointed Charles ShriverReifsnider, who had served as a missionary in Japan, as the bishop in charge ofthe denomination’s nine Japanese American congregations. Just a few weeks later,the U.S. government ordered the removal of people of Japanese ancestry fromCalifornia and from parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. As that militaryorder was being implemented, Daisuke Kitagawa, a priest in Seattle, wrote an“Open Letter to Fellow Christians in the USA,” in which he strongly objected tothe eviction of his people from their homes and their relocation in internmentcamps. Despite this protest, even sympathetic Episcopalians such as Tucker andReifsnider could do little to ameliorate the situation, though they did insist oncontinuing the church’s ministry among those who were confined in the camps. 28After the war, the justice of placing Japanese Americans in internment campswas one of several controversial subjects addressed in a collection of essays entitledChristianity Takes a Stand (1946), edited by William Scarlett, the bishopof Missouri and chairman of the General Convention’s Joint Commission onSocial Reconstruction. Assigned the task of considering how the EpiscopalChurch might take the lead in creating “a better world for all peoples” after 1945,