Hiroshima: a priest's story

[Michie]

Father Tadashi Hasegawa is a Catholic priest and pastor of Hiroshima's Misasa Catholic Church, which stands not far away from where he had been severely injured by the A-bomb in 1945. He sat with me in his rectory and, after serving iced coffee, told his story with animated gestures.

"I was with some 15 students on the river bank when the bomb dropped. I was 14 years old and a little over a mile from the hypocenter. At 7:30 that morning the air-raid warning had been lifted, and some of us students were taking a swim before reporting for our 8:30 work assignment at the nearby school. I was up on the bank. I heard a B-29 coming and those of us who were gathered there spotted it in the sky.…I fell face down on the ground. The bomb exploded and I was surrounded by yellow light. It was as though ping-pong balls of light were falling all around me. Tremendous heat burned fiercely into my back as well as into the back of my head, arms and legs. My clothing caught fire.

"The students who kept looking at the sky when the bomb exploded suffered burns all over the front of their bodies. They all died within two weeks of the bombing.

Continued- http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/WWII/feature0183.asp#F5

 

[FullyMT]

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, who would eventually become the Superior General of the Jesuits was also near an atomic blast in Japan (don't remember which) and even ventured into the city with novitiates he was in charge of in order to find the injured.

It's amazing what people went through and did during that time. Perhaps it helped to not know about what an atomic bomb was at the time...

 

[Michie]

I was watching an old movie from the 40's about this the other day. The way it was depicted those bombers were none too happy about that mission.

 

[MikeK]

Interested Americans might consider what the Church has to say about Weapons of Mass Destruction and petition their government acordingly.