Aug 6, 1945:  God Spares 8 German Jesuits Near Ground Zero In Hiroshima

  This account, if true, is quite amazing.  I am still trying to find more sources for it, and there may be some parts which are true, and others which are not.  But...it so far appears that the core part of the 'miracle' is true.  These 8 Jesuits were close enough to the epicenter of the Hiroshima blast that they should have died - almost instantly.  All the reports I have read so far agree that they were about 1 km from the bomb when it exploded.  Yet they survived, and were strong enough to man a makeshift hospital further out from the epicenter in the following days! 

  In the early 1600's, 26 Catholics from various groups were martyred in Japan for preaching Christ.  They were crucified.  In 1945, if this account is true, it appears that some of Jesus's Catholic people were miraculously saved from the area almost directly beneath the Hiroshima nuclear fireball ( A detonation at approximately 1 kilometer is very close.  A fast man or woman can sprint that far in approximately 2 to 3 minutes.)   

  And more missionaries (Franciscans) were surprisingly spared in the other Japanese town where a nuclear bomb was detonated - Nagasaki - because of the location of their residence.  Though close to the explosion, it was reportedly nestled in the hollow of a hill, and somewhat protected due to that.       

  holysouls.com  and christian-miracles.com or tldm.org are sites which have nore material about this event.  If you search Hubert Schiffer you will find multiple sources for these accounts, but several of them repeat information from common sources.  You may find others that I didn't find. 

  Do your own research.  We know that God CAN do anything great, but it always pays to do some research.  On occasion there are exaggerations or fabrications involved with miraculous claims, but my only real question with this one so far is just that I haven't heard of it before.  It seems too great to have been forgotten so soon. 

 So, God may have allowed me to find the answer to something that I have wondered about for a long time now!  I thought that there were many parralels between the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, described in about Chapter 38 of the Book of Genesis, and the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There were so many parallels between the two events that it started to seem bizarre to me.  (See the account on Deeds of God in the 1945 A.D. time frame.)  But there was one thing missing.....in Genesis, Lot and his family, who are loyal servants of God living amidst the wicked citizens of that city, are rushed away by angels before their town is destroyed.  So, though God destroys those he is angry with, God's faithful are saved!  But I had never found anything like that concerning Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  I thought "Why wouldn't God have saved his people from there also?"  Well......I think I found what I've been looking for;  there was a great and miraculous salvation of some of the people working for God and Jesus when the bomb went off in Hiroshima! 

  The bomb - a Uranium 235  loaded weapon of 15 to 20 kilo-ton size - detonated as designed at an elevation of 600 to 1000 yards above the surface of the ground after it was dropped at 8:15 in the Japanese morning on August 6th, 1945.  Apparently, nearly everyone within 1.5 kilometers distance of the epicenter point on the ground below died instantly or within minutes.  The bomb is estimated to have developed about 100 psi of blast pressure near epicenter, enough to tear off limbs and crush skulls, and destroy lungs.  It also produced brief ground temperatures of about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit - enough to catch hair and cotton clothing on fire almost instantly, enough to sear lungs and damage exposed eyeballs.  The noise of the bomb exploding, near the epicenter, could cause deafness.

  But just 8 blocks from the spot on the ground that would be the epicenter of the blast in Hiroshima, there was a church attached to a house - both were built of brick like a few of the buildings in the vicinity.   Eight Jesuit friars met together there and spoke the rosary each morning, and attended mass at the church, before going about their work of reaching out to the Japanese people to tell them about Jesus.  The Jesuits had a fairly long history of witnessing Christ to the Japanese.  Though this account is about Hiroshima, in 1580 the Jesuits had actually been granted Nagasaki (the only other Japanese city that a nuclear bomb was dropped on) as a fiefdom to work from, though it was taken back from them in 1587 because their growing influence aroused suspicion among Japanese rulers.  The Japanese have historically been resistant in the extreme to accepting Jesus. 

  On the day of the bomb drop, 30 year old Jesuit Friar Hubert Schiffer was having an ordinary morning.  He had just conducted mass in the church.  Then he had left the church and went into their common house, and had set down at the breakfast table with a grapefruit and a plate and a spoon.  He cut the grapefruit in half, and he was just about to stick the spoon into it when there was a giant flash of very bright light.  His thought, in the partial instant right after the light flash, was that maybe there had been an explosion down at the marina.  Fuel was stored there for refueling submarines.

  But then, as he remembered it, an invisible force picked him up from the chair, hurled him around in the air and made his body spin, banged on him, battered away on him, and made him feel like a leaf in the wind.

  When he woke up, he was laying on the ground.  The house was still standing, the church was mostly destroyed.  Some reports say he was partially buried under some rubble.  Looking around him, most of the other buildings for a long distance in every direction were destroyed - leveled to the ground.  Especially the wooden ones, which were in flames and ruins.  All around him was mostly destroyed. 

  Other of his brothers, also unharmed, found him.  They helped him stand.  He felt himself for damage.  There was some broken glass in his neck, which was a somewhat serious injury, and he bled a good amount from it.  Apparently nothing else too major was wrong with him.  He was OK.  

  They began to survey the widespread damage, to help the hurt and injured as best he could.  At another Jesuit location much further from the blast they set up a hospital of sorts. 

  Eventually, within a few days, they presented themselves to some US military doctors that had arrived.  When the doctors learned where he was at the time of the explosion they were surprised at these Jesuit's good physical condition.  Reportedly, they informed Schiffer to be prepared - that his body would probably begin deteriorating from the radiation very soon.   

  Even at the beginning, the 8 Jesuits, re-united, puzzled the doctors.  All should have died almost instantly.  Yet none showed the blisters or red skin, or those other sort of symptoms that come from being exposed to massive amounts of nuclear radiation.  The Jesuits appeared essentially unaffected. 

  As the days went by, it became apparent that something seemed to have shielded these people.  Thousands of Japanese people as near to the epicenter as they had been were already dead.  Others were rapidly dying.  Yet according to the sources I have so far read, not a sign or symptom appeared on any of the eight Jesuits from radiation.  After a couple of weeks, one source said that two of the Priests became ill for a couple of days, but that is a long time after the blast.  It wasn't likely from radiation.  They were working in a disaster zone with many sick and dying people, and clean water was a problem.   

  The sources say that this case sparked a lot of interest, and the interest lasted for quite a long time.  Friar Schiffer reportedly estimated, when an old man, that he had been interviewed about 200 times in his life concerning these events and their miraculous protection from the hellish destruction of the bomb.

  He consistently gave the same answer concerning being saved, I read.  He always said that he believed it was because they all said the rosary together every day in that church and he believed in 'the message of fatima'.  He believes that Jesus protected him and his fellows that day.  These 8 Jesuits were protected as much as Daniel in the Lion's den, as much as Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar.  In the midst of the worlds first deadly nuclear maelstrom, they remained untouched by the profane fire of man's first thermonuclear weapons attack.  And they were very near to ground zero!  Myself, I belief that it was their love of Jesus and service to the Lord that saved them.  As for the message of Fatima....??  I know little about that.  But they are the ones that were there. 

   While I hope to find more sources to substantiate this report, I have posted it so that people can investigate it to their own satisfaction.  If true, it is indeed a great Deed of God. 

  These men have lived long lives, and according to the sources that I looked at they attended a 'Congress of the Eucharist' in Philadelphia USA in 1976.  All 8 of these survivors of Hiroshima were then still alive.  In fact, one source said that Father Schiffer lived for 33 years after the Hiroshima blast he survived.  That would mean he died at 63 years of age.  That's fairly normal.    

  Science cannot really account for this event, if it happened as reported.  Nor can it explain why their house was damaged only lightly compared with nearby structures.  Many other nearby buildings were battered to rubble in an instant.  But to some of us, the answer is amazing, yet no mystery.  Great is our God!!  Able indeed is Jesus our King to protect those He calls His own!