On August 6 it was the anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and on August 9 – officially declared the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady in 1950 – it was the anniversary of the dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki. In its Heritage Series, the CTS has republished The Day the Bomb Fell, an eyewitness account by a German Jesuit, Fr Johannes Siemes, alongside Peace is our Problem, an essay written by Mgr Bruce Kent in 1970.
Fr Siemes, who was living in the Jesuit novitiate at Nagatsuka, 2km from Hiroshima and halfway up a hillside, starts: “6 August began in a bright, clear summer morning…” In retrospect, knowing the appalling devastation that he was to witness and that has been described countless times since, these words sound heavy with ill-omen. The priest, along with his Jesuit companions who had not been injured, did their best to help Japanese victims of the blast – an almost impossible task. With no medical supplies, all they could do was clean the wounds and make the sufferers comfortable.
