On the morning of August 6, 1945, Fr. Hubert Schiffer, a German Jesuit missionary in Hiroshima, Japan, had just celebrated Mass and was sitting down to breakfast. He had barely begun eating his grapefruit when a brilliant flash of light filled the room.
Seconds later, the world's first atomic bomb used in warfare exploded over Hiroshima.
Fr. Schiffer later described what happened:
“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.”
When he regained his bearings, the city around him was devastated. Tens of thousands of people had been killed, and entire neighborhoods had been reduced to rubble.
Yet Fr. Schiffer and the other Jesuits living at the nearby mission had survived. Their rectory, located relatively close to the center of the explosion, was still standing. Their survival became the subject of considerable attention.
Thirty-one years later, in 1976, Fr. Schiffer shared his remarkable experience during the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. He said he believed that the protection he and his fellow Jesuits had experienced was connected to their devotion to Our Lady of Fatima.
“We believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”
The priests had made the Rosary part of their everyday lives, following Our Lady's request at Fatima to pray it daily for peace. Fr. Schiffer remained convinced that their survival was an extraordinary answer to prayer.
Their experience is a remarkable chapter in the history of Hiroshima and a reminder of the faith that sustained so many Christians through the suffering of World War II.
Another Jesuit who knew something about trusting God through extraordinary suffering was Fr. Walter Ciszek. Imprisoned for 23 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, he later recounted how prayer and surrender to God's will sustained him in his book He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith. Available today from The Catholic Company!
