www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Two radiances: 1945

Perhaps we ought to remember today Aug. 6 the contrast between the light provided by the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima in 1945 and the glorious light of the transfiguration of the Lord...and in so doing offer prayers for the repose of those who were killed in that bombing; the subsequent A-bomb attack on Nagasaki on Aug. 9; as well as all who have perished over the centuries in wars, natural desasters, forced deportations, gulags, persecutions and "ethnic cleansings".

Something interesting I had read some years ago:

(1.) The president, Harry Truman, who ordered the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a Freemason.

(2.) Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the highest population of Catholics of all the cities in Japan.

Does one tie into the other? Guess we'll find out in eternity.

When my son was in college a few years ago, he had the priveledge to traveling to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan with his history class for a peace trip on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the bombing .

The Catholic priest of--if memory serves correctly-- Hiroshima, showed them a statue of the Virgin Mary which was found unscathed amid the devastation. My son was very moved. He was equally moved by the forgiving spirit of those Japanese survivors he and his classmates spoke to. One saw her mother's figure completely turn into a figure of ashes before her eyes. Kyrie Eleison!

Indeed, the Nagasaki community was founded by Paul Miki, who with his companion Martyrs are Commemorated in the West on February 6.

The cruciform shape of the Cathedral of Hiroshima made it very visible from the air and so it was the actual target for the first bomb.

Kyrie Eleison.

I write with the mixed heavy heart of the son a Pacific Theatre WWII Navy Veteran. My Dad was just the Navigation Officer on the type of supply ship immortalized by "Mr. Roberts" and hardly on the front lines. Those closer might well be able so say "I owe my life to that Bomb" but to me those words border on Idolatry.

Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!!

Please forgive me for two things. First of all, this is not a request for prayer and should be in Town Hall.

Second, my father served as an officer in the infantry that made its way from island to island toward the Japanese home islands in that war. He rarely spoke of his experiences on Saipan and Okinawa along the way and, when he did, it was about hair-raising experiences fighting the Japanese army. They didn't seem to have the same value on life that he, with his Christian upbringing did. He always stressed that his unit was in the forward group preparing for that invasion and that they'd been told that the army could expect one million casualties as the Japanese fought for every square inch of their home islands. Banzai attacks where the man charging had already given up his own hope for life only to take out as many Allies as possible seemed to be a daily part of this endeavor. He told me I owed my life and the lives of my two siblings to the fact the bomb, though terrible, ended a war very much unlike that fought in Europe against Germany and Italy.

My great uncle served with the unit that mapped the terrain for the armies, beginning in North Africa, then Europe, and finally the Pacific. He remarked about the tough terrain of the islands and the fact that the fighting was much more difficult as a result of both terrain and the way in which the Japanese fought.

I don't think the horror of the atomic bomb should be repeated, but I do take strong exception to those who want to rewrite history not knowing the on-the-ground reality of the Pacific war.

In Christ,

Bob

Before anyone goes into revisionist history, please know that I'm a military historian, I've gone around the block on this one more times than I care to imagine, and I will just say if you can think of a better solution, one which would end the war with less loss of life all around, please do let me know what it is. I've looked at them all--blockade, conventional bombardment, and ultimately, invasion. In every scenario, many hundreds of thousands--possibly millions more--would have died than died in the two nuclear bombings, most of them Japanese civilians, but possibly as many as 100-200,000 American soldiers and sailors.

Those who seriously wish to consider the situation should read the following books, which make use of both U.S. and Japanese records:

Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, Code Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan--and why Truman Dropped the Bomb, Simon & Schuster (New York) 1995

D.M. Giangreco, Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis), 2009

Max Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, Alfed A. Knopf (New York), 2008

For the record, though:

The Christian population of Nagasaki was infinitesimal, the Christians having been utterly suppressed by Hideyoshi and Tokogawa in the 16th-17th centuries.

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were were legitimate military targets, with extensive military facilities as well as defense industries (most of the latter dispersed into residential neighborhood.

Nagasaki was not even the primary target for the second bomb. Kokura, the intended target, was covered by clouds, so Major Charles Sweeney, commanding the B-29 "Bock's Car" diverted to Nagasaki, only to find it also covered with cloud. At the last possible moment before he would have had to abort the mission for lack of fuel, a small hole opened in the clouds, allowing the bombardier to make a hasty attack (that missed the aim point by half a mile).

Therefore, all notions of some sort of anti-Catholic or Masonic motivation behind attacking Nagasaki are the stuff of pure fantasy. From the perspective of American war planners, there were no Catholic Japanese, Shinto Japanese, or Buddhist Japanese--there were just Japanese, a ruthless enemy who needed to be defeated as quickly as possible.

Finally, given the alternatives for bringing about the surrender of Japan, as well as the history of the post-war world, I find myself in full agreement with writer Paul Fussell, who, at the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was an infantryman awaiting the invasion of Japan--in which he, and all his comrades, fully expected to die. Around the time of the fortieth anniversary in 1985, he wrote a trenchant essay that cut through the cloud of sanctimony surrounding the event. It's title: "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb". Extracts from it can be found here: Thank God for the Atomic Bomb [crossroads.alexanderpiela.com]

If you think about it rationally, for all its destructive power, the bomb was probably the only thing that prevented the Cold War from becoming very hot. The bomb probably prevented a major war between India and Pakistan, and several potential wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Back in the days of the ill-advised nuclear freeze and total disarmament movement, I used to hand out buttons that said,

BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS
(make the world safe for conventional war)

To those of you who still envision a world without the bomb, I caution: be careful what you wish for--you might not be pleased when you get it.

It brought the war in the Pacific to an end. Thats the way people who found themselves on the frontline of that war in this country say when they think back on those years.

This conversation has been very rational and respectful--I appreciate all the contributions.

I don't know where this comes from, since the aim point for the bomb was the T-shaped Aioi Bridge that spanned the river running through the city and connected to an island in the river. It missed the aimpoint by about 800 feet (outstanding bombing accuracy for the time) and exploded over the Shima Clinic, a medical building run by Dr. Shima Kaoro.

I certainly defer to the military historian. I never researched the target but simply accepted on face value what had been written by another (who had an agenda, to be certain).

My hazy recollection is that the "cathedral as target" notion appeared in something written decades ago by Jim Wallis of the Sojourners.

Your information causes me great relief. There are strategic necessities in wartime and battle that lead to collateral damage; but the deliberate targeting of a Christian house of worship was not what I would expect from the land I love. Germany, certainly, targeted Coventry. But we were and are not Germany.

Jim Wallis would.

The Germans never aimed at Coventry Cathedral. They were aiming at the aircraft factories in the city. However, one has to realize that bombing in World War II was an inexact science. For the first three years of the War, only 10% of British bombers were dropping their bombs within five miles of their target. This was due to the primitive nature of night navigation, the predominance of cloud cover over Europe, and the effects of German defenses. Basically, the bombers flew until the navigator thought they were over the target, and then the bombardier let fly. Later in the war, blind bombing aids greatly improved accuracy, but that's a relative measure.

The Americans followed a doctrine of daylight "precision" bombing against purely military facilities. The fabled Norden bombsight was said to be capable of placing a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet. The truth was more prosaic: the circular error probability (CEP)--a circle within which half of all bombs dropped will fall--for U.S. bombers was roughly 1000 meters; in the presence of cloud cover or heavy anti-aircraft fire, that error doubled. Unfortunately, factories in Europe tended to be surrounded by worker housing, so to miss by a kilometer or two put the bombs square in the civilian quarters.

A British bomber pilot summed it up nicely in a conversation with an American bomber pilot shortly after the war: "We area bombed area targets, and you area bombed point targets". That is, the British targeted cities, and the Americans targeted specific factories, but the end result was exactly the same.

I honestly don't even remember where I read what I had posted above. I have heard and read much of what Stuart K has posted, and I am generally supportive of his position, and can see the logic involved. I'm also politically conservative, and very military-friendly. With that being said, we have to keep in mind that Catholic moral teaching holds that it is never permissable to directly take the life of an INNOCENT human being. In warfare, it is never permissable to directly target civilians. We are taught that, for example, in the case of a bomber pilot who aims to take out an enemy military target, and has no intention of hurting civilians, that he is not morally culpable before God if he unintentionally kills civilians who happen to be near the target. I'm no expert on warfare and weapons, but I have a hard time conceiving of a situation where nuclear weapons can be used to "surgically" take out enemy targets without hurting masses of civilians. The memory is foggy, but I remember reading, back in the 80's, that the "neutron bomb" was actually more capable of precision in taking out military targets, with much less danger to civilians. Some input from Stuart K on this would be of interest.

Dn. Robert

Ah, Father Deacon, this is why the entire Catholic just war doctrine is ridiculous in the context of modern war, and why I much prefer the Eastern Christian position that no war is just. I will post an article by Father Maximos of Holy Resurrection separately.

Some things to remember about the bombing of Japan.

First, in war, one is limited by the tools at one's disposal. As I noted, it was generally impossible to perform "surgical" bombing in World War II. Over Japan, the discovery of the jet stream further complicated matters: the head winds of more than 200 mph exceeded the capability of the Norden bomb sight, and attempts at point bombing factors were ineffective--the bombs went everywhere. This caused Curtis LeMay to look for an alternative approach.

Second, Japan had deliberately dispersed its defense industries into residential areas. Most component manufacturing was done in "home factories", with one or two machine tools turning out one particular piece part, which would then be shipped to another home factory for assembly into a subsystem, which would then be shipped to a dispersed factory for final assembly. This turned whole cities into legitimate military targets. And, since every family was involved in the war effort in some manner, almost every Japanese from the age of eight to eighty was, in some manner, part of the war effort.

Third, Japanese cities, being built largely of wood and paper (literally), were particularly vulnerable to fire. Knowing this, and recognizing the ineffectiveness of high altitude precision bombing attacks, LeMay ordered low altitude incendiary attacks, beginning with a small scale raid on the night of 23-24 February 1945 that burned out 1 square mile of the city. A follow-up raid on the night of 9-10 March by 335 B-29s destroyed 16 square miles of Tokyo and created a conflagration that killed in excess of 100,000 people (30,000 more than the Hiroshima bomb). Follow-up raids on other Japanese cities, while not causing as many deaths, succeeded in crushing Japan's military production. One thing it did not do is convince the Japanese military to end the war.

Fourth, four cities had been spared air attacks by the Targeting Committee, because it was considered necessary to use the atomic bombs on a pristine target in order to measure its effectiveness; these were Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Kokura, though Kyoto was later omitted from the list because of its cultural significance and replaced by Nagasaki. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were significant military targets. Aside from being industrial centers, they contained arsenals, shipyards, military headquarters and rail hubs. If not reserved for the atomic bombs, they would have been subjected to conventional incendiary attack.

Fifth, alternative ideas for employment of the bomb, including a "demonstration" on a deserted island for Japanese observers, were not realistic. First, there were only two bombs in existence, and wasting one on a test was not logical. Second, if the bomb failed to explode (there had been only one test), the threat would lose credibility. Third, even if it worked, the Japanese observers might not be convinced (their response to the bombing of Hiroshima makes this likely).

Sixth, on 26 July, President Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration setting the terms for Japan's surrender. These the Japanese rejected out of hand. Truman therefore authorized the use of the bombs beginning in the first week of August.

Seventh, the attack on Hiroshima did not alter the position of the Japanese military; rather, it hardened its position--having withstood the atomic bomb, Japan could withstand anything (besides, how many bombs could the Americans have?). Even after the second bomb, the Japanese military were resolved to fight to the death--not just theirs, but that of every last Japanese subject. Only the intervention of Emperor Hirohito ended the fighting--and the Japanese military attempted a last minute coup to prevent his surrender announcement from being broadcast. The only reason no additional atomic bombs were dropped between 9 and 13 August was our lack of additional bombs (the third one would have arrived on Tinian by the end of August).

While all this was going on, the Allies were still planning for Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan. The first phase, Operation Olympic, would have invaded the southern island of Kyushu in September or October, followed by Operation Coronet, landings on the Kwanto Plain near Tokyo, in November. Japan is a mountainous island, with limited numbers of suitable landing beaches. The Japanese high command had deduced U.S. plans, and was moving troops behind the places we had selected for invasion, most of them from the Kwantung Army in China (which is why the Soviet invasion of China was a walkover). We monitored the Japanese buildup through Magic communications intercepts (we had cracked Japanese codes in 1941), and it was estimated by X-Day the Japanese would actually have numerical superiority on the landing beaches. Consider the slaughter on Omaha Beach on D-Day, where U.S. forces outnumbered the German defenders by five to one; now imagine what would have happened if there had actually been more Germans than Americans.

Casualty estimates for the invasion began escalating alarmingly. Operations on Okinawa were used as a model, which led to predictions of 1.2 million U.S. casualties (25% fatalities). Japanese casualties, based on Okinawa, would have been several times higher, and included a much higher proportion of fatalities.

To minimize losses, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff devised a plan to drop nine (9) atomic bombs on the Japanese defenses on and behind the beaches of Kyushu, followed by landings seventy two hours later. Given the high population density of Kyushu, direct civilian casualties would have been several times higher than Hiroshima, and long-term casualties from fallout would also have been very high. Since we knew little of radiation effects, most of our troops probably would have succumbed to radiation poisoning as a result of moving across contaminated ground.

So, in the end, we dropped two atomic bombs that killed roughly 110,000 Japanese, mostly civilians (there were a lot of Japanese troops in both cities), many of whom were defense industrial workers (who wasn't?) and ostensible members of a civilian militia (all Japanese would have been mobilized in the event of invasion).

The first alternative to the atomic bombing--the continued fire bombing of Japanese cities--was reaching the point of diminishing returns (we were running out of cities), and the Japanese high command was not affected by by it. We can estimate that perhaps twice as many Japanese would have died if we had pursued this course, with no guarantee that Japan would have surrendered.

The second alternative, invasion, would have resulted in more than a million Allied casualties and certainly several million Japanese casualties at least--most of them civilians. The use of atomic bombs as tactical weapons would have left much of Japan contaminated with high levels of radiation.

The third alternative, close blockade of the islands, would have exposed Allied naval and air forces to continued attack by Japanese kamikaze forces, resulting in several tens of thousands of deaths (not counting the Kamikazes). The effects on Japanese civilians would have been devastating. Already on the verge of starvation, Japanese would have begun dying of hunger and disease in huge numbers. The Japanese military had anticipated this and was ready to order the elimination of "useless mouths"; i.e., the very old, the very young, the weak, the sick and the handicapped, as well as all Allied prisoners of war. All remaining food would be directed to the troops and key civilian workers. In any siege, the soldiers starve last. Again, Japanese casualties, almost all deaths, would have been counted in the millions--perhaps the tens of millions--and the war certainly would have dragged on into 1946.

So, examining all of the reasonable options--a key word, reasonable, for so many of the proposed alternatives take little cognizance of reality, or presume facts and knowledge not available in 1945--the inescapable conclusion is, as horrible as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, it was still the most humane and moral way to end the war, the one that saved the most lives--mainly Japanese lives. We may not have acted with that intention, but that was the result, and in so doing, proved ourselves to be far more humane than the Japanese military and government that was willing to sacrifice every last Japanese on an altar of national immolation.

I shed no tears for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nor do I think any apology is owed to anybody. As Sherman said, "War is cruelty, you cannot refine it. The more cruel it is, the faster it will be over". And that is why the concept of "just war" to me is oxymoronic. If the taking of any life, no matter how reasonable, is the destruction of the image and likeness of God, then how can mass slaughter, regardless of the cause, be "just"? The Byzantines were more honest with themselves: war is always sinful, but sometimes it is necessary for the defense of the Empire and the Church. Perhaps the difference between the Eastern and Western understandings of sin had something to do with the Western development of the concept of "just war"; perhaps it was the Western Church's reaction to the collapse of central secular authority and endemic "private" warfare. Either way, the notion that meeting a series of objective criteria and preconditions (premised on forms of warfare that no longer pertain) somehow makes war "right" seems to me the height of folly.

On the "neutron bomb", more properly called an "enhanced radiation weapon", it is nothing more than a fission-fusion device intended to minimize blast effects while generating more "prompt radiation" (high energy neutrons and gamma rays) than a weapon of comparable explosive yield. Thus, a 10 kT neutron bomb would generate as much prompt radiation as a 100 kT weapon. This would minimize blast damage to towns and cities (assuming the target wasn't actually a town or city), and would not effect civilians in deep shelters, but would have the same effect on exposed troops as a much larger bomb. Hence the facile description of it as a weapon that "kills people but leaves the buildings intact".

In the context of a Soviet invasion of Germany, neutron weapons made some sense. We would be fighting on our own soil, and so the civilian population could take cover underground. Soviet troops advancing in tanks and personnel carriers would not have nearly as much protection. Used on second echelon Soviet forces, they would have the effect of incapacitating the troops who would reinforce the first line of attackers, who, it was assumed, we would be able to defeat with conventional weapons.

Thanks be to God, this never had to be put to the test. For which, we must also thank the existence of the atomic bomb, and the taboo about its use resulting from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Here is that essay by Father Maximos; it is worth pondering:

Necessary, and IMHO, justifiable when the action is in defense against an unjust, offensive attack. I did enjoy reading your posts. I know that you are a military historian, and it is your job to be knowledgeable, but I am impressed by the level of your knowledge in this area. One thing that comes out very clearly, and I have always felt this way, is the best way for a just society to preserve the peace is to be so strong that nobody would want to mess with you, i.e., the slogan "Peace Through Strength". Back in the 80's when the "nuke freeze" nonsense was being pushed by the American Left, the American bishops (The "movers and shakers" were "progressivists"/liberals at that time) came out with a pastoral letter which took a pacifist approach on war and weaponry. Many of the apparatchicks at USCC/NCCB were promoting this letter as if it was defined dogma. However, both the German and (surprisngly) the French bishops came out with pastoral letters at the same time saying that it was morally justifiable to possess nuclear weapons as a deterrent (while simultaneously working to reduce the threat). As you have indicated above, the deterrent aspect has worked. Had we followed the "nuke freeze" option, many of us (assuming we had not already been executed) would now be engaged in hard labor in Siberia, and the hammer and sickle would still be flying over "Soviet" Russia (and her captives).
You also make the point that modern warfare has changed things. It is referred to as "total war". Interestingly, this has come about just as the world had become less Christian. If the "Just War" theory is obsolete given the context of modern warfare, then it should at least be "tweaked" to address our modern situation. Perhaps it is time for an updated orthodox analysis/official hierarchical teaching (at the highest levels, to avoid what happened between the Bishops of the U.S., France and Germany in the 80's) which is consistent with the Church's moral teaching that one is justified in self-defense against unjust attack, and justified in defending others against unjust attack, while at the same time preserving the teaching that one must not target innocent civilians. This would have to address the questions of the use of modern technology in warfare, nuclear weapons, etc., in such a way that serious Catholics (and other Christians and religious believers-if they are interested) in the military and in the area of National Defense would have a clear means of informing their consciences when making such heavy decisions. Just my "two cents".

Dn. Robert

Fr. Maximos' comments are very much worth pondering. What it provoked in my mind was the recollection of a lecture I heard by the late RC Scripture scholar, Fr. William Most on the topic of warfare. He did mention that St. Basil the Great had forbidden those who had killed enemy troops in battle from receiving Holy Communion for a time, although I also remember him bringing out the idea that St. Basil was working from a notion of "ritual impurity". This appears to be consistent with Fr. Maximos' comments about war as "necessary evil", still being evil.

Dn. Robert

The Canons of St. Basil do indeed require soldiers who kill in battle to abstain from communion for two years--precisely the same requirement as for those who commit murder (also the same penalty as for those who obtain an abortion). Ritual purity played no part in it, as the concept was pretty much alien to the Church at that time (though, as Mother Vassa's essay demonstrated, it played a prominent role in later times).

The Byzantine Church steadfastly refused to accede to the wishes of several emperors, including Heraclius I, to absolve soldiers fighting against the Persians (and later the Muslims) from their sins, thereby converting these into holy wars on par with the Crusades. While defending Church and Empire against the heathen was a both necessary and to some extent admirable, because the means involved killing and destruction, it could never be considered just.

The best work on the subject in English is John Haldon's Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565-1204, which includes an entire chapter on the attitudes of the Orthodox Church towards war.

If I may be allowed to quote myself (The Dictionary of Modern War), "the term is propagandistic and literary", a "theoretical concept implying the use of all available resources and weapons of war, and the elimination of all distinction between military and civilian targets. Even Hitler's Germany refrained from using all its available weapons (e.g., nerve agents) and refrained from some success-maximizing measures such as the execution of unproductive prisoners of war".

A much better definition of the phenomenon would be "industrial warfare" or "nation-state warfare", the former indicating the use of industrial techniques for the mass production of weapons and the support of large armed forces, the latter indicating the mobilization of all the resources of the state--economic, military, political and human--to the achievement of military objectives.

However, we now live in an era of "post-industrial", and to some extent, post-nation state warfare. The cost and complexity of modern weapons has become so great that they cannot be fielded in large numbers, or operated by hastily trained conscripts. They are also so lethal that amassing large forces does nothing except present the enemy with a target-rich environment. Therefore, armies are becoming smaller and composed of long-term professionals. Furthermore, the cost and complexity of modern weapon systems means only the top tier of nation states can field them even in moderate numbers, or operate them with competence. We saw this in the two Gulf Wars, where U.S. forces so overmatched the Iraqis that the latter never figured on the battlefield. So great is U.S. superiority in conventional war that, at this point, we have no peer competitors, no potential adversaries willing to challenge us in that arena.

But our success in one area merely forces our adversaries to respond in an asymmetrical manner, leveraging their strengths against our weaknesses. In general, this has meant avoiding head-on fights with U.S. forces in favor of attacking U.S. and allied civilians, infrastructure, symbolic targets, using a combination of terrorism and insurgency.

Much of this is being done by "sub-national" or "trans-national" groups like al Qaeda and its affiliates, which circumvents the well-established laws of war based on the nation-state system.


I would say the more important factor is erosion of the nation-state system which has governed international relations since 1648. This has opened the door to a host of ethnic, religious and other groups willing to use violence to implement their agendas. Most of these groups are non-Western, and therefore have not been formed by the Western way of warfighting, which has generally distinguished between combatants and non-combatants, and sought to achieve military objectives through head-to-head confrontations on the battlefield (this has been the Western preference since the ancient Greeks; see Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War). Other peoples, on the other hand, have waged wars based on raiding, pillage and terror, attacking not the armed forces of the enemy, but his societal fabric. To some extent, what we see is a reversion to this.

Ironically, supporters of "just war" theory also tend to support a more expansive definition of Geneva Convention protections and the laws of war. Specifically, by wanting to extend Geneva protection to terrorists and insurgents who systematically violate the laws of war the Geneva Convention was meant to uphold, they erase the distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants, and thereby legitimize the notion that "everybody is a combatant". Conversely, in dealing with counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, they insist on the strictest possible interpretation of "non-combatants" while defining "proportional response" in the narrowest possible manner. The effect is to handcuff the very forces that support the concept of war they claim to embrace, while strengthening the hand of those who reject the concept outright.

On a daily basis, I receive e-mails from Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of "Inside the Vatican" magazine. Attached is part of his commentary on the Feast of The Transfiguration. He comments on the Hiroshima/Nagasaki events, and mentions the Jesuit house in Nagasaki which was living the Fatima message, and which survived the blast, despite being less than one mile from the point of detonation.

Dn. Robert

Here is the text:

"In the very depths of our grief..."

We continue our quest for Jesus on the anniversary of the day thousands were killed in a blaze of light in Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. And we continue to ask how the mysterious event we call the "Transfiguration" of Christ on Mt. Tabor — when he seemed to his apostles to be transformed, for a moment, into a being, not of ordinary flesh, but of light — could be related to these war-ending events, and indeed, to all human suffering

By Robert Moynihan

=====================================

"Sakebi Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki" — "Shouting Hiroshima, praying Nagasaki"

I left off my last email on the anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ by saying there was nothing more to say — only silence.

But I was wrong. There is more to say.

I received many letters about the newsflash. Several echoed the words of one correspondent: "I don’t see a connection in your story on Hiroshima that relates to Jesus, whom you say is your subject."

And one said, "Your far better story would have been in Nagasaki."
Several defended the use of the bomb, arguing that in August 1945, the question of the bomb was the strategic one of ending the war and saving lives, particularly American lives.

I hope that it is not necessary to say that I am in favor of saving every possible human life.

Pope Pius XII at the time himself condemned the bombings, expressing a view in keeping with the traditional Roman Catholic position that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man."

And the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano commented in its August 7, 1945, issue: "This war provides a catastrophic conclusion. Incredibly this destructive weapon remains as a temptation for posterity, which, we know by bitter experience, learns so little from history."

One writer brought to my attention the story of a Catholic doctor who died in Nagasaki due to the effects of the bombing. His name was Dr. Takashi Nagai.

And his story, in a way I had not anticipated, connected this bombing to the Feast of the Transfiguration, and to Christ, more closely and directly than even I had thought.

===============================

The Bombing of Nagasaki

Nagasaki was not the primary intended target on August 9; Kokura was. Kokura was a smaller city. The exact intended target was Kokura Arsenal, the biggest arms factory in western Japan, which produced missiles, aircraft, and weaponry for the army, and also chemical weapons. Some 57,000 people would have been killed by a blast there, it was estimated in Japan.

But there was cloud cover, including from a previous incendiary attack.

Nagasaki was the backup site, not because of civilian population, which was on the south side of the city, but because of the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works north of that, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works even further north.

Decades after the attacks, there is a saying in Japan about the reporting on the anniversaries of the events: "sakebi Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki" — "shouting Hiroshima, praying Nagasaki."
Why praying Nagasaki?
Because there is a directly religious connection which emerged after the Nagasaki bombing.

At the last moment in the clouds over Nagasaki, intending to drop the much more complex plutonium bomb, “Fat Man,” on a radar fix, the bombardier caught a brief glimpse of land and dropped Fat Man.

Intended for the Mitsubishi arsenal targets, the bomb missed by over a mile and hit squarely over the Catholic suburb of Uragami.

The Uragami cathedral, which could hold 5,000 Catholics, burst into flames at midnight that night and was consumed.

Urakami was where secret Christians had historically assembled, but were discovered in the 1860s and jailed. US President Ulysses S. Grant demanded these Christians be released for a simple reason — that a nation that did not respect religious freedom could not be considered “enlightened.” The freed farmers then built Urakami Cathedral.

But how did Nagasaki become “inori no Nagasaki," "praying Nagasaki"? The book A Song for Nagasaki tells us.

In a testimonial on the back cover, Shusako Endo, himself a Catholic convert from atheism, writes, “Christians and non-Christians alike were deeply moved by [Dr. Takashi] Nagai’s faith in Christ that made him like Job of the Scriptures: in the midst of the nuclear wilderness he kept his heart in tranquility and peace, neither bearing resentment against any man nor cursing God.’ ”
Nagai was a physician, the head of radiology at a hospital, and already weak and suffering from radiation exposure. At his hospital the morning of the bomb, he was spared. Returning to his home, he found the ashes of his wife. His children had left for a distant point in the mountains and were spared. He continued his work at his own peril, gradually declining, then bed-ridden, where he continued his writing. His book The Bells of Nagasaki is well known in Japan, and the movie that followed. The praying memorial in Nagasaki is taken from the influence of Dr. Nagai.
Here is what he once delivered in a speech to his fellow residents, taken from A Song for Nagasaki:
“I have heard that the atom bomb… was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right above the cathedral… It was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. God’s Providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?
“We are inheritors of Adam’s sin… of Cain’s sin. He killed his brother. Yes, we have forgotten we are God’s children. We have turned to idols and forgotten love. Hating one another, killing one another, joyfully killing one another! At last the evil and horrific conflict came to an end, but mere repentance was not enough for peace… We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice… Cities had been leveled. But even that was no enough… Only this hansai [holocaust] on His altar… so that many millions of lives might be saved.
“How noble, how splendid, was that holocaust of midnight August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling darkness and bringing the light of peace [the emperor is said to have given his agreement in Tokyo for peace at the exact time the Urakami cathedral burst into flames]. In the very depths of our grief, we were able to gaze up to something beautiful, pure, and sublime.
“Happy are those who weep; they shall be comforted. We must walk the way of reparation… ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody. But we can turn our minds to Jesus carrying his Cross up the hill to Calvary… The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice! Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the world and religious freedom to Japan.”
The Nagai museum now stands beside the bare one-room hut, named Nyokodo, where Nagai was moved in the spring of 1948. He was known as the Ghandi of Nyokodo.
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The Priests Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

My attention has also been drawn to an interesting report by Donal Anthony Foley in England's Catholic Herald on August 5, which recounts the remarkable survival of the Jesuit Fathers in Hiroshima and which connects the bombing with the story of Fatima. Here are excerpts:
By Donal Anthony Foley on Thursday, 5 August 2010

This Friday, August 6, will see the Feast of the Transfiguration celebrated in the Church. It commemorates the occasion when Christ, accompanied by Peter, James, and John, went up a high mountain – traditionally identified with Mount Tabor in Galilee – and was there “transfigured” before them, so that “his face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as light” (Mt 17:2).

The Greek word for transfiguration is metemorphothe, from which we get the word “metamorphosis”. So the Transfiguration was a complete and stunning change in the appearance of Jesus... Its purpose was to prepare them for the reality of the crucifixion, so that having once seen – in some sense – his divinity, they would be strengthened in their faith.

August 6 is also an important date in world history: the fateful day on which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. On that day, a Monday, at 8.15 in the morning, an American B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, dropped its bomb “Little Boy”, which... vaporised practically everything and everyone within a radius of about a mile of the point of impact...

But in the midst of this terrible carnage, something quite remarkable happened: there was a small community of Jesuit Fathers living in a presbytery near the parish church, which was situated less than a mile away from detonation point, well within the radius of total devastation. And all eight members of this community escaped virtually unscathed from the effects of the bomb. Their presbytery remained standing, while the buildings all around, virtually as far as the eye could see, were flattened.

Fr Hubert Schiffer, a German Jesuit, was one of these survivors, aged 30 at the time of the explosion, and who lived to the age of 63 in good health. In later years he travelled to speak of his experience, and this is his testimony as recorded in 1976, when all eight of the Jesuits were still alive. On August 6 1945, after saying Mass, he had just sat down to breakfast when there was a bright flash of light.

Since Hiroshima had military facilities, he assumed there must have been some sort of explosion at the harbour, but almost immediately he recounted: “A terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunderstroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me [and] whirled me round and round…” He raised himself from the ground and looked around, but could see nothing in any direction. Everything had been devastated.

He had a few quite minor injuries, but nothing serious, and indeed later examinations at the hands of American army doctors and scientists showed that neither he nor his companions had suffered ill-effects from radiation damage or the bomb. Along with his fellow Jesuits, Fr Schiffer believed “that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the rosary daily in that home”...

After this first bombing, the Japanese government refused to surrender unconditionally, and so a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki three days later on August 9. Nagasaki had actually been the secondary target, but cloud cover over the primary target, Kokura, saved it from obliteration on the day. The supreme irony is that Nagasaki was the city where two-thirds of the Catholics in Japan were concentrated, and so after centuries of persecution they suffered this terrible blow right at the end of the war.

But in a strange parallel to what happened at Hiroshima, the Franciscan Friary established by St Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki before the war was likewise unaffected by the bomb which fell there. St Maximilian, who was well-known for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin, had decided to go against the advice he had been given to build his friary in a certain location. When the bomb was dropped, the friary was protected from the force of the bomb by an intervening mountain. So both at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can see Mary’s protective hand at work.

The apparitions at Fatima in Portugal took place in 1917, when from May to October three young children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, saw the Blessed Virgin six times, culminating in the “miracle of the sun” on October 13, when 70,000 people saw the sun spin in the sky and change colour successively, before falling to the earth in a terrifying manner. Many of those present thought it was the end of the world, but the sun reassumed its place in the sky to great cries of relief.

The essence of the Fatima message concerns conversion from sin and a return to God, and involves reparation for one’s own sins and the sins of others, as well as the offering up of one’s daily sufferings and trials. There was also a focus on prayer and the Eucharist at Fatima, and particularly the rosary, as well as the Five First Saturdays devotion, which involves Confession, Holy Communion, the rosary and meditation, for five consecutive months with the intention of making reparation to Our Lady (for more details visit Theotokos.org.uk).

It’s interesting to reflect, then, on the theme of “transfiguration” which links these various events. Christ’s face shone like the sun on Mount Tabor, and at Fatima, Our Lady worked the great miracle of the sun to convince the huge crowd which had gathered there that the message she was giving to mankind was authentic. Consider, too, that the poor people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered as man-made “suns” exploded in their midst causing horrific devastation. But at Hiroshima the eight Jesuits, who were living the message of Fatima, and particularly the daily rosary, were somehow “transfigured,” protected by God’s divine power, from the terrible effects of the bomb.

Surely there is a message here for all of us, that living the message of Fatima, in a world which grows ever more dangerous, and which is still threatened by nuclear war, is as profound a necessity for us as it was for Fr Schiffer and his companions.

(end Foley story)

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"The ruined tabernacle of human nature"

Strikingly, this does connect with what Pope Benedict XVI writes in his book Jesus of Nazareth.

In that book, Benedict devotes several dense pages to an analysis of the meaning of Christ's Transfiguration (pp. 305-318). I will try to summarize here what he says.

First, Benedict notes that all three Synoptic Gospels "create a link between Peter's confession [when Peter declares that Jesus is "the messiah, the son of the living God"] and the Transfiguration by means of a reference to time."

(The Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes in the exact same wording. Scholars believe that these Gospels share the same point of view, that they "see together." The term "synoptic" comes from the Greek syn, meaning "together", and optic, meaning "seen". The Apocryphal Gospels, as well as the canonical Gospel of John, differ considerably from the Synoptic Gospels.)

This means, Benedict says, that "the two events, in each of which Peter plays a prominent role, are interrelated."

He adds: "In both cases, the appearance of his [Christ's] glory is connected with the cross."

"Jesus' divinity belongs with the Cross — only when we put these two together do we recognize Jesus correctly," the Pope writes.

Benedict then delves deeply into the time references associated with the Transfiguration, trying to determine when the Transfiguration actually occurred.

To make a long story short, he concludes that Jesus' Transfiguration took place on the last day of the great Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, which was in the early fall.

So, the Transfiguration of Christ most likely occurred on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, in Hebrew.

The Hebrew word sukkot is the plural of sukkah, "booth, tabernacle." The sukkah is intended as a reminiscence of the type of fragile dwellings in which the ancient Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

Throughout the holiday the sukkah becomes the living area of the house, and all meals are eaten in it.

According to Zechariah, in the messianic era Sukkot will become a universal festival for all mankind and all nations will make pilgrimages annually to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast there.

"All Jewish feasts contain three dimensions," the Pope writes. "They originate from celebrations of nature religion and thus tell of Creator and creation; they then become remembrances of God's action in history; finally, they go on from there to become feasts of hope, which strain forward to meet the Lord who is coming, the Lord in whom God's saving action in history is fulfilled, thereby reconciling the whole of creation."

So the feast recalls the tents in the desert -- and looks forward to the messianic age of peace.

Jesus went up to the mountaintop (Mt. Tabor) for a reason: "to pray," (Luke 9:28).

Luke continues: "And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white." (Luke 9:29)

Here the Pope gives a marvelous summary: "The Transfiguration is a prayer event; it displays visibly what happens when Jesus talks to the Father: the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus himself is 'light from light.' The reality that he is in the deepest core of his being, which Peter tries to express in his confession [i.e., the son of God] — that reality becomes perceptible to the sense at this moment."

The Pope notes the difference between this light and the light that lit up Moses' face when he came down off the mountain (see Exodus 34:29-35). He writes: "Because Moses has been talking with God, God's light streams upon him and makes him radiant. But the light that causes him to shine comes upon him from the outside, so to speak. Jesus, however, shines from within..."

Can human beings participate in this light? The Pope says, "Yes."

He writes: "Through Baptism, we are clothed with Jesus in light, and we ourselves become light."

At this point, the Pope notes, Moses and Elijah appear. They talk with Jesus. He notes the meaning of their appearance: the law and the prophets are speaking with Jesus, and of Jesus.

But what are Moses and Elijah saying to him, and of him?

"Only Luke tells us," the Pope writes. "They 'appeared in glory and spoke of his departure [his exodus], which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.'" (Luke 9:31)

This means, their topic of conversation is the cross.

The Pope writes: "This is a clear statement that the Law and the Prophets are fundamentally about the 'hope of Israel,' the Exodus that brings definitive liberation; but the content of this hope is the suffering Son of Man and Servant of God, who by his suffering opens the door into freedom and renewal."

And here the Pope tells us that this is the key to all our reading of Scripture: "Scripture [Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets] had to be read anew with the suffering Christ, and so it must ever be. We constantly have to let the Lord draw us into his conversation with Moses and Elijah; we constantly have to learn from him, the Risen Lord, to understand Scripture afresh."

And Peter asks Christ to let him build three tents, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Christ.

Here is the key. What is it? That, in Jesus, the times prepared by the Law and the Prophets, the times of the Messiah, have finally arrived — precisely at this moment of the Transfiguration.

This moment was the beginning of the Messianic age, which we are living in, but which is still not totally complete.

The Pope writes: "By experiencing the Transfiguration during the Feast of Tabernacles, Peter, in his ecstasy, was able to recognize [and here the Pope cites Jean Danielou] "that the realities prefigured by the Feast were accomplished... the scene of the Transfiguration marks the fact that the messianic times have come."

And then comes one of the most profound lines in the Pope's book: "It is only as they go down from the mountain that Peter has to learn once again that the messianic age is first and foremost the age of the Cross and that the Transfiguration — the experience of becoming light from and with the Lord — requires us to be burned by the light of the Passion and so transformed."

There is one more thing to add. The Pope reminds us what John says in the Prologue to his Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent [dwelt] among us" (John 1:14).

Benedict writes: "Indeed, the Lord has pitched the tent of his body among us and has thus inaugurated the messianic age. "

The messiah is here.

Gregory of Nyssa reflected on this fact, Benedict tells us, in "a magnificent text."

For Gregory of Nyssa, the Feast of Tabernacles, though constantly celebrated, remained unfulfilled.

And Gregory of Nyssa says: "For the true Feast of Tabernacles had not yet come. According to the words of the Prophet, however [an allusion to Psalm 118:27], God, the Lord of all things, has revealed himself to us in order to complete the construction of the tabernacle of our ruined habitation, human nature" (De anima, PG 46, 132B)

The opens up the entire mystery of God's plan of salvation.

It explains why human beings are so fragile, why we are so confused, and weak, and imperfect. It is because our nature ("the tabernacle of our ruined habitation") has been marred, made subject both to sin, and to death.

And this explains what our hope is: that this "tabernacle" will be "rebuilt," that in the future kingdom, the kingdom of the messiah, our human nature will no longer be a "ruined habitation," but a flawless tabernacle.

What the messiah does, what his mission is, is to restore the "ruined tabernacle" which from the beginning was intended to reflect fully the image and likeness of God — human nature.

That nature would then "shine with light" — we would truly become "like gods."

But the way to this restoration of our nature is not the way many, or most, or indeed all, of us would prefer: the easy way of transformation without any pain or sacrifice.

No, it is the way of the cross.

It is the way of sacrifice — even the way of sacrifice of the things we hold the most dear, even the sacrifice of our very lives.

"On the mountain," Benedict writes, "the three disciples see the glory of God's kingdom shining our of Jesus... On the mountain, they learn that Jesus himself is the living Torah, the complete word of God. On the mountain, they see the power (dynamis) of the Kingdom that is coming in Christ."

He concludes: "Equally, they must learn what Paul says to the disciples of all ages in the First Letter to the Corinthians: 'We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God.'"

And this is the mysterious truth about all human sacrifice — even the sacrifice of those who died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings — that it somehow "fills up" what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, to help bring about the salvation of souls and hasten the coming of God's eternal kingdom.

I wonder what is it about those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that makes them somehow categorically different from all those others killed during the Pacific War? For in all the sanctimonious weeping about the bomb is forgotten some inconvenient truths--that the Japanese killed far more civilians with rifle butts and bayonets at places like Nanking and Manilla, than were killed by the both atomic bombs and the conventional fire bombing of Japanese cities. When one speaks of deliberate targeting of civilians, one cannot get more deliberate than ramming a bayonet into the womb of a pregnant woman, or decapitating an old man with a sword.

What nobody wants to do is admit the existence of situations from which there is no moral exit. The end of World War II was one such situation. The Japanese would not surrender, even though their situation was hopeless. As long as they continued to resist, people would continue dying. It isn't as though they were just minding their own business when we decided to drop two nuclear weapons on their heads--they brought it on themselves and left us no choice.

In fact, as I think I have shown pretty clearly, of all the realistic options, the atomic bombs were the most humane, saving the most civilian lives (as well as the lives of perhaps a quarter million American troops). As opposed to the supposedly immoral bombs, all of the "moral" alternatives, such as blockade or invasion, would have killed millions of Japanese civilians and left Japan far more devastated than it was, even after its cities had been blitzed. None of the critics has ever come up with a realistic alternative that would have spared more lives than were taken by the atomic bombs.

The thing is, we have pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the burns, the scars, the mangled limbs, the radiation-wasted bodies. But we don't have pictures of all the people who survived because we not only had the bomb, we had the moral courage to use it, too.

Our self-flagellation over the use of the bombs is morally repugnant. It inverts the historical reality of the war, turning the Japanese into innocent victims, and those who took up arms against Japanese aggression into heartless villains. Worse, still, it provides the Japanese people with the opportunity to wrap themselves in the mantle of the oppressed, ignoring the cruel manner in which they oppressed millions upon millions of people, and allows them to avoid confronting their own history and their own guilt.

Sorry to disagree (who? me?) but The Christian population of Nagasaki was not infinitesimal. Regardless of numbers, Nagasaki had the largest Christian population of any city in Japan, and the second largest Christian population of any city in Asia. Simply dismissing this reminds me of some American "Catholic" leaders in World War II who actually claimed that the Japanese did not have souls, and who of course paid no attention to the Catholic presence in Japan.

That the atomic bomb was used against Nagasaki almost inadvertently is almost worse - it shows that no one was taking Nagasaki into consideration.

Please note that I had close relatives fighting in the Pacific theatre and I have close Chinese friends; I am well aware of Japanese misconduct in China and the horrible things they did in various prisoner of war camps - I have visited Changi myself.

I am also aware that it is probable that the atom bombing of Hiroshima was crucial in bringing the war to an end and saving more lives than it cost.

But this is not an acceptable excuse for Nagasaki. The Emperor was already moving for surrender when Nagasaki was bombed. While even after Nagasaki there was an effort by the militarists to block the Emperor's surrender, the contradiction is so blatant (a coup against the Emperor to defend the Emperor?) that under the then circumstances it is unlikely that the coup could have succeeded for any length of time.

Fr. Serge

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What was to take into consideration, Father? Nagasaki was a major naval port, military industrial center and communications hub. That there were Christians living there? How does that make it different from all of the Christian naval ports, military industrial centers and communications hubs that were bombed by both sides in the war? If Nagasaki had not been placed on the list of potential atomic targets, its size and importance would have ensured its destruction much earlier as part of the conventional bombing campaign.


This is an example of what I mean by post hoc thinking--or, if you prefer, 20/20 hindsight. As I said, the U.S. was monitoring Japanese military and diplomatic communications. The terms for surrender had been laid out at Potsdam, and the Japanese could take or leave it. Their refusal to respond laid the groundwork for the Hiroshima attack. Afterwards, the U.S. waited to hear from the Japanese government, but diplomatic traffic from Tokyo to its embassies in neutral countries indicated further efforts to temporize. We know, from post war memoirs, that the Emperor and members of his immediate circle were inclined to accept, but refused to order the military to surrender--for the very good reason that the military would likely refuse. Without any response three days after the Hiroshima attack, it was necessary to repeat the exercise to impress upon the Japanese government that Hiroshima was not a one time event--there were more bombs available, and we were willing to use them. And, while Nagasaki may have convinced Hirohito to take action (at last!), the military was still not inclined to go along. For Hirohito to make the surrender recording and authorize its broadcast was something of an act of courage on the part of the diffident Mikado.

All this can be found in the three excellent books I mentioned--the first to make extensive use of declassified communications intercepts and Japanese records.



With respect, Father, Japanese history says otherwise. In various periods, the Emperor had been in the control of various military factions, held as a virtual prisoner at times, occasionally forced to sell his autograph for food, and reduced, in effect, to a rex sacrorum, necessary for certain religious functions, but devoid of meaningful power.

The Pacific war started largely because of the phenomenon of gekukujo, or "the oppression of the high by the low"; i.e., the intimidation and occasional assassination of high ranking military and civil officials by low ranking military officers. The spirit of gekukujo permeated the Japanese military by 1945, and it is entirely within the realm of possibility that an army faction could have laid hold of the Emperor and used him as a puppet while continuing the war. Given the isolation of the Imperial person, just who would know otherwise or be in a position to do anything about it?

You're hitting close to something that's bothered me for decades.

Without the sneak attack on Perl Harbor, nearly all of the American sailors and soldiers would have been civilian shopkeepers and farmers. We did not have a professional military of soldiers, but civilians who stepped forwarded in the face of a military attack against their home.

These boys that would have been slaughtered ending the war should have the same status and consideration as "other" civilians, and their lives were worth no less. I've never understood the argument that twenty of them should die for each live that would have been spared without the bomb.

Fr. Serge will probably have mixed reactions to my having scandalized a Jesuit by writing a paper arguing that *not* using the second bomb would have been immoral . . .

What was the difference between the Christians of Nagasaki and the numerous Christians in Europe killed by various bombings (including the fire-storms of Hamburg and Dresden)? The question is not hard to answer, although the use of weapons of mass destruction which will inevitably kill and injure large numbers of civilians is always deplorable.

But Europe is not Asia. The long effort to propagate Christianity in Japan, China, and so on was not, in general, overly successful, but had reached significant numbers of Japanese in Nagasaki. That was certainly worth taking into consideration.

Incidentally, I noticed that the USA was officially represented at the Hiroshima commemoration this year - and that this seems to have promoted a number of critical comments that the American representative did not "apologize" for the bombing of Hiroshima. It might be an oversight on my part, but I have the strong impression that Japan has yet to apologize for the horrible mistreatment of prisoners of war in Japanese hands.

Fr. Serge

So the answer is Japanese Christians fell onto some sort of endangered species list? To be frank, Father, the entire matter was so tangential to the central matter of winning the war that nobody ever gave it a moment's notice.

On the official U.S. presence at the Hiroshima commemoration this year, see the following article from Commentary Magazine [commentarymagazine.com] :

This should be said again:

"the Japanese have never taken full responsibility for their own conduct during the war "

This information is not fully disclosed to the Japanese people, even today.

In fact, Japanese school books give a highly sanitized version of the Great Pacific War, one which, read by the uninformed, might give the impression that Japan was more sinned against than sinning. This stands in marked contrast to Germany, which, whatever faults it may have, has been very forthright in confronting its Nazi past.

Correct me if necessary, but I am under the distinct impression that I have stated quite clearly that Japan has not recognized her own responsibility for numerous atrocities during World War II. I have no objection to stating again that the Japanese treatment of prisoners in their hands - and these prisoners included civilians, women, and children - was unconscionable and revolting. Individual Japanese have apologized from time to time, but neither Hirohito nor his current successor have apologized in any recognizable way. There are some persons still alive who suffered this terrible abuse at the hands of the Japanese.

I could add the rape of Nanking, the horrors of "Manchukuo", and lots more.

I don't read Japanese, and have no particular interest in reading Japanese schoolbooks. It is quite unlikely that I could be convinced that Japan was an innocent victim of World War II.

Nevertheless, this does not justify the atom bombing of Nagasaki. I wouldn't know whether those who made the decision to bomb Nagasaki were interested in the Japanese Christians in that city. But I am certainly interested. May God grant them eternal rest, and remedy the damage that this particular atrocity did to Christianity. Surely the US could have waited more than two days before dropping the second bomb.

Fr. Serge

One of my Seminary professors--possibly Scott Gustafson, but 20 years has caused my memory to blur--once described war as "using sin against Sin."

Father, I doubt it entered their considerations (particularly for a secondary target.

However, there was a clar need (at least to their view, with which I tend to agree), to drop a second bomb.

We threatened them with a superweapon. We used it, and told them we would keep using it.

They didn't surrender (what had happened was beyond comprehension). To keep the threat, we had to keep going, and this was our only chance to come across as being able to do this repeatedly.

There was only enough refined material to make three bombs. We'd used one in New Mexico, another on Hiroshima, and only had one more for something like the next six months.

If the second bombing didn't bring about surrender, we were looking at a minimum of another six months.