The Catholic Holocaust of Nagasaki—“Why, Lord?”

Brother Anthony Josemaria

The witness of the Catholics  of Nagasaki shows  God’s providence in the darkest of times.


By Brother Anthony Josemaria


On August 9, 1945, God’s inscrutable providence allowed an atomic bomb named “Fat Man” to be dropped from a B-29 into the heavily populated city of Nagasaki. The epicenter of the blast was the Urakami district, the heart and soul of Catholicism in Japan since the sixteenth century. 

My purpose in this article is to share an insight into God’s purpose in allowing this horrible event, a discovery made from reading (the recent Ignatius Press reprint of) Fr. Paul Glynn’s marvelous book A Song for Nagasaki. The book is subtitled, The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb.1

Nagasaki is the oldest open-port city of Japan and one of the most beautiful, situated in the southernmost part of the country, on the western side of the island of Kyushu and only about fifty miles from South Korea. 


A natural harbor, the great port of Nagasaki is protected by several islands at its entrance, and consists of a heavily populated residential and commercial area extending a few miles up the valleys feeding the harbor and also along terraces up the hillsides. 


Though commercial activity declined in the twentieth century and especially after World War II (because of the closing of trade with China), industry increased greatly during the twentieth century as Nagasaki became the shipbuilding capital of Japan.

Bombed Nagasaki church

Nagasaki’s Catholic heritage

Nagasaki was first evangelized in 1549 by Jesuit missionaries from Portugal, led by the Spanish Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, who arrived in Nagasaki on August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary. 


Providentially, perhaps, exactly four hundred years later in Nagasaki on August 15, 1949—and exactly four years after Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945—there would be a great celebration of Japan’s evangelization by this great preacher, with high Church officials and a delegate from Pope Pius XII in attendance. 


The coincidence of these three “Assumption events” is quite striking and, as we shall see, not isolated.

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The Great Power of the Rosary... Fr. Schiffer and seven other priests survived Hiroshima by praying the Rosary daily…

Rosary from Nagasaki

from Gloria.tv


"Realize the power in your hand with the Rosary, for in your hands you hold the power of God. If you do not recognize the Rosary, can you expect to be recognized by My Son? How much can you expect? Why do you hide My Rosary? It was with a Mother's loving heart that I chose to give you these pearls of Heaven that you reject.


"Woe to all dedicated who seek to remove these from the little ones' hands, for their punishment will be metered in accordance to it!


"Why has sophisticated man cast aside these tokens of My love? Those who remain true to My Rosary will not be touched by the fires. Gather these treasures, My children, for the time will come that you will not find them on the counters of your stores." - Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1970


Eight Jesuit priests survived the searing hurricane of blast and gamma rays during the atomic bomb explosion in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. They were in a rectory only 8 blocks from the blinding center of the nuclear flash. Although everyone within a mile radius perished, all survived and they attribute their survival to the Rosary and living the Fatima message.


At 2:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber took off from the island of Tinian to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan. At 8:15 a.m. the bomb exploded eight city blocks from the Jesuit Church of Our Lady's Assumption in Hiroshima. Half a million people were annihilated. However, the church and eight Jesuit fathers stationed there survived (four of the priests were Fathers Hugo Lassalle, Kleinsorge, Cieslik and Schiffer. According to the experts they "ought to be dead," being within a one-mile radius of the explosion.


Nine days later on August 15, Feast of Our Lady's Assumption, U.S.forces were ordered to cease fire.
This is the incredible story of the late Fr. Hubert Schiffer, as retold by a priest who met him:


I met Fr. Schiffer in the late 70s at the Tri-City Airport in Saginaw, Michigan, as he was going to give a talk for the Blue Army Novena/Triduum. As I chauffeured him around he told me stories of his life, especially of the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. On the morning of August 6, 1945, he had just finished Mass, went into the rectory and sat down at the breakfast table, and had just sliced a grapefruit, and had just put his spoon into the grapefruit when there was a bright flash of light. His first thought was that it was an explosion in the harbor (this was a major port where the Japanese refueled their submarines.)


Then, in the words of Fr. Schiffer: "Suddenly, a terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunder stroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me, whirled me 'round and 'round like a leaf in a gust of autumn wind." The next thing he remembered, he opened his eyes and he was laying on the ground. He looked around and there was NOTHING in any direction: the railroad station and buildings in all directions were leveled to the ground.


The only physical harm to himself was that he could feel a few pieces of glass in the back of his neck. As far as he could tell, there was nothing else physically wrong with himself. Many thousands were killed or maimed by the explosion. After the conquest of the Americans, their army doctors and scientists explained to him that his body would begin to deteriorate because of the radiation. Many of the Japanese people had blisters and sores from the radiation. 


To the doctors amazement, Fr. Schiffer's body contained no radiation or ill-effects from the bomb. Fr. Schiffer attributes this to devotion to the Blessed Mother, and his daily Fatima Rosary. He feels that he received a protective shield from the Blessed Mother which protected him from all radiation and ill-effects. 


(This coincides with the bombing of Nagasaki where St. Maximilian Kolbe had established a Franciscan Friary which was also unharmed because of special protection from the Blessed Mother, as the Brothers too prayed the daily Rosary and also had no effects from the bomb.)