This week we have another musician as our guest on LifeLine. Tsutomu Aragaki had a very rough beginning in life. His father was a Mexican-American G.I. stationed in Okinawa after WWII, his mother is Japanese. Shortly after birth, thinking she was applying eye medicine, the midwife put a powerful salve in his eyes that left him blind. His G.I father divorced his mother and returned to the States, his mother re-married and left Tsutomu to be raised by his grandmother. He grew up thinking his grandmother was his mother; his world was rocked when the neighborhood gossip bluntly told him the truth.

Radio was one of his only joys in life, bringing him music and also Christian radio programs. (His passion for radio is still going strong, and when we went to tape him, he knew my voice right away from listening to the shortwave radio programs I did for PBA for many years!)

Radio led to his attending church, where he was encouraged to sing. To make a long story short, he finally studied voice at a prestigious music school and has become a very well known classical tenor in Japan. He also went to seminary and has pastored a church and is still working as an evangelist as well as singing professionally.

We taped him singing, and then taped an interview with him. His testimony was wide ranging, covering from the joy of finding purpose to his life in the Lord, to the struggle and then victory as a believer to forgive his father for leaving them. He says if he ever has a chance to meet his father again, he'd like to sing, "Amazing Grace" for him!

I don't have a video clip from LifeLine (I'm writing at home, not work) but found a short clip of him singing on YouTube: