It was a sacrifice of those deemed purest by God and thus ready to ascend to Heaven through the cleansing fire of martyrdom that made peace possible. As the atomic firestorm ebbed and the survivors began the slow process of recovery and rebuilding, they would turn to this same faith and find in their hearts not only the power of forgiveness but an intimate understanding of the high price their God had demanded of them. These Christians had only recently been allowed to openly practice their faith without fear of persecution, imprisonment, or death. American airpower-on what would be the final mission to end the long and hard-fought Pacific war (a mission blessed by army chaplains and piloted by a practicing Catholic) decimated the Christian community of Nagasaki. 3Įxamined here is this tragic, unprecedented, and fateful collision of members of the Christian communities of two nations at war, America and Japan.
These Christians survived over two centuries of hiding underground after a ruthless campaign by warlords intended to rid Japan permanently of its foreign-born Christian influence, which they perceived as an opiate to weaken the populace and prepare it for Western colonization. The Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin Mother and lovingly and painstakingly built over several decades by one of Asia’s most persecuted of Christian communities. In striking Nagasaki, we not only dropped this second and even more destructive atomic bomb onto this most unlikely of targets (owing, in large measure, to its proximity to, and location south of, the primary target more than anything else), the bomb detonated nearly directly above the steeple of Asia’s largest Catholic cathedral.
And yet our final act of combat would be to drop the deadliest bomb ever devised by man onto Japan’s most Christian of communities-one that shared a closer historical and religious connection with our country than any other city in Japan. We, the liberators and defenders of freedom, fought what, to most historians, was the textbook definition of a just war for four long, hard-fought, and bloody years against a global alliance of totalitarian dictatorships. This Nagasaki atomic strike may be viewed as the greatest irony (and perhaps tragedy as well) of World War II. Whereas Hiroshima was a perfectly executed operation, almost nothing went right on the second atomic mission, and it came close to failure.” 2 On the second one, almost everything went wrong. have never been thoroughly aired.” 1 And Air Force Magazine former editor-in-chief John Correll has observed that the “first atomic mission was executed perfectly.
Almost forgotten, it seems to me, has been the mission to Nagasaki,” as “many of the events before, during and immediately after the flight. Olivi in his memoirs, “Certainly, the flight of the first atomic bomber caught the attention of the American public in 1945” and “continues to be the subject of a furious debate.
As observed by USAF lieutenant colonel Fred J. This was in marked contrast to the Hiroshima mission, which delivered the less powerful “Little Boy” device to within 800 feet of its intended target, Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge. It was detonated above the predominantly Christian Urakami valley, just up the river and across a range of mountains from the Nagasaki waterfront and well over two miles from the intended ground zero for the blast. This article tells the story of the lesser-known second of the two atomic missions in the final days of World War II, which delivered a uniquely powerful and complex explosive device known as “Fat Man”-the first plutonium-implosion device ever deployed in war.