Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle and Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with a Pilgrimage of Peace delegation from their respective archdioceses, participated in an interfaith prayer ceremony and a peace memorial ceremony to commemorate the lives lost.

They also advocated for a world free from the spectre of nuclear weapons.

The interfaith ceremony, led by the Hiroshima Prefecture Federation of Religions, was held at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound.

Archbishop Etienne expressed the weight of the moment - "It was hard to fathom that with just one bomb, this entire city along with some 140,000 people died as a result, far more than the tens of thousands gathered this morning to remember them," he wrote on his blog.

The August 6th, 1945 bombing led to the deaths of thousands and countless others suffered from radiation-related illnesses. The survivors, known as "hibakusha," continue to bear physical and psychological scars from the tragedy.

Moving interfaith service

During the moving interfaith service, Shinto priests, religious leaders and dignitaries paid their respects, and the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi was read as a poignant reminder of the universal yearning for peace.

The Pilgrimage of Peace initiative is actively engaging with Japanese bishops to foster relationships and collaborate towards nuclear disarmament. It also extends sincere apologies for the hardships Japan endured due to the bombing.

Following the interfaith service, the Seattle and Santa Fe delegation proceeded to Hiroshima Peace Park where the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony was held.

This event, attended by over 5,000 people representing more than 110 nations, featured speeches from Hiroshima's mayor, governor, Japan's prime minister and a representative from the United Nations.

As the Peace Bell resonated at 8:15 am, marking the exact moment the bomb struck Hiroshima, a profound silence filled the air.

Archbishop Etienne emphasised the significance of the younger generation's role in peace efforts. Two young children read the Children's Commitment to Peace, inspiring a reminder that everyone can contribute to a better world through simple yet meaningful actions.

The delegation visited Gion Catholic Church, where they shared a homemade lunch with parishioners and watched a documentary about Jesuit priests who were present in Hiroshima during the bombing.

Archbishop Etienne reiterated a resounding call for nuclear disarmament, stating that thousands of nuclear weapons pose a global threat. He urged a shift towards building relationships of care, healing broken bonds and working tirelessly for a future marked by genuine and lasting peace.

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

CathNews New Zealand

Step outside the American explanatory cloud—we bombed military installations to force unconditional imperial surrender—defining public understanding to see: the US Government explicitly targeted civilian populations, a violation of international law and codes of military conduct.

Diplomats and archivists at the Vatican are convinced the attack against Nagasaki was a strike against Japan and the Catholic Church.

They provide a rationale rarely discussed, in the face of general puzzlement over unexplained aspects of the tragedy.

Ground Zero: A Catholic Spiritual Center

The second atomic attack was a near-direct hit on Asia's largest cathedral, in the country's renowned Catholic settlement, Urakami, a residential district of Nagasaki—significantly north of the city's commercial centre and Mitsubishi's shipyard.

The ties between Nagasaki and the Catholic Church go way back:

• A lord donated land to Jesuit missionaries from Portugal in 1580.
• The new religion spread so quickly it was outlawed as a threat to local rulers.
• Twenty-six martyrs were crucified in the city's hills in 1597.
• The only port continuously open to foreign trade, it was a stronghold of secret faith during the long suppression of Christianity (1614-1873).

"Big Boy," the plutonium implosion bomb detonated over Urakami, killed about 40,000 people immediately and another 30-40,000 by the end of the year.

It decimated 85 per cent of the Catholic community, many descendants of the "Hidden Christians" (Kakure Kirishitans), who concealed the faith behind Shinto and Buddhist practice.

It was impossible for military planners not to know the area's history and Catholic significance.

So famous was this region as a spiritual centre the charismatic German Franciscan, St Maximum Kolbe, opened a monastery there in 1930. (Eleven years later he was murdered in a concentration camp.)

The U.S. required visual bombing, not radar reliance.

In the late morning on August 9, bombardier Kermit Beahan recalled seeing clouds open, and "the target was there, pretty as a picture."

What does the mission's target map look like? We can't know…it's missing from the National Archives.

Hidden Hand Adds "Nagasaki"

President Harry Truman learned about the atomic weapons program when he took office.

By then, operational momentum for testing both "gadgets," a uranium bomb and plutonium implosion device, saturated decision-making.

A "target committee" appointed by the military, comprised of officers and nuclear scientists, zeroed in on the least humane option: detonating the bombs to maximize damage to entire cities of at least three miles diameter.

Yet, experienced war hands such as Dwight David Eisenhower, General of the Army, and General Omar Bradley, opposed their use. Eisenhower explained later, "Japan was already defeated and…dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."

Declassified documents portray Stimson as ambivalent: He decried civilian casualties of incendiary bombings, telling Truman on June 6 he didn't want the US "to get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities."

While in Potsdam, he went directly to the president to request protection for the ancient city of Kyoto based on cultural value. Stimson reported in his diary, the president concurred.

Nagasaki did not show up on hit lists generated in May and June.

Its mountainous, irregular terrain failed target committee preferences. Instead, the city was subjected to five rounds of brutal incendiary attacks.

Top-tier A-bomb targets escaped firebombing so the catastrophic blast would get full credit for destruction. Allied POW camps in Nagasaki argued against obliterating it, too.

At the very last minute, Nagasaki appears as a potential target on a draft strike order dated July 24—as a handwritten add-on, coinciding with the July 24 Stimson-Truman meeting on targets.

A typed, Top Secret document commands that the US "will deliver its first special bomb" to "Hiroshima, Kokura, and Niigata in the priority listed."

In pen, someone struck "and" as well as "in the priority listed," inserting with an arrow "and Nagasaki" after "Niigata."

The amended strike, order with Nagasaki added, was officially circulated the next day.

According to historian Alex Wellerstein who first highlighted the document, the hand that added Nagasaki is unidentified.

Series of Unfortunate Events

Persistent American accounts of the second bombing mission posit a series of unfortunate events:

• The B-29 carrying Big Boy had fuel pump problems.
• It wasted inflight time waiting for a camera plane that never showed.
• Three times, it tried to target Kokura but couldn't eyeball the hit.
• Then, its next target, Nagasaki, was concealed by cloud cover.

Japanese commentators have various theories but few think the US annihilated Urakami by mistake.

Some believe the historic site was destroyed because the cathedral was used to store rice and other food supplies for the imperial army.

An immediate scapegoating reflex emerged among non-Catholic Nagasaki survivors who blamed the blasphemous worship of a foreign god for bringing ruin to their city.

Several recent studies explore how Urakami's Catholic hibakusha (atom bomb survivors) deployed the theology of martyrdom and forgiveness to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Gwyn McClelland in Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests, and Catholic Survivor Narratives and Chad Diehl in Resurrecting Nagasaki both point to the key role played by Dr. Takashi Nagai, a Catholic lay leader, hibakusha, and author of The Bells of Nagasaki.

In a eulogy for the dead in front of the cathedral's ruins, Nagai called the bombing an act of providence: the sacrifice of innocent blood atoned for the sins of a world at war.

This framing reassured Christian victims, but it had a silencing impact—reinforcing the self-suppression they practiced for 250 years. US command helped make "the saint of Urakami" a bestselling author: Nagai was the only hibakusha allowed to publish internationally.

For decades, occupation forces appropriated Nagai's explanation, as did the Japanese—Emperor Hirohito visited Nagai personally—because it absolved both of responsibility.

What Rome Believes

The Vatican has never publicly discussed the bias it sees behind US willingness to stab Japan's Catholic heart on Aug 9, 1945, but privately, archivists and experts in Rome remind me of an intense diplomatic row between Washington and Rome over Japan that marred relations throughout the war.

Three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pope Pius XII established diplomatic ties with the imperial power in Tokyo.

When the Church informed allied officials, they howled. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles called the pope's decision "deplorable."

President Franklin Roosevelt found it "unbelievable."

Pius' response to Washington, according to a US envoy living in the Vatican was self-evident: diplomatic relations don't mean approving all actions of a foreign interlocutor.

Interstate diplomacy is an essential way the Catholic Church protects its believers and advances its mission.

When the emperor's envoys approached Rome in 1942 with a proposal Rome had long sought, the Church, pragmatically, agreed.

In its view, the Church had no choice but to engage because the empire's advancing military was bringing more Catholics under Japanese control.

Protecting the spiritual interests of some 20 million Catholics in Japanese-occupied territory was a fundamental responsibility. Continue reading

• Victor Gaetan is senior international correspondent for the National Catholic Register and a contributor to Foreign Affairs magazine.
• Published by 19FortyFive

But 75 years ago, the hell of war reached a new all-time immoral low when on August 6, 1945 a United States Boeing B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima instantly killing over 70,000 - mostly civilian - children, women and men.

And again three days later, on August 9, 1945 the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people - again mostly civilians. Nagasaki was the centre of Japanese Catholicism.

Since then eight additional nations have acquired nuclear weapons: Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

When one considers the tensions between India and Pakistan, Israel and certain Middle East nations, the U.S. and China, the U.S. and North Korea and the U.S. and Russia, the chances of nuclear war are dangerously real.

Russia and the U.S. possess over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenal. And each nation has several hundred nuclear weapons aimed at each other - programmed at "launch-ready alert" or otherwise known as "hair-trigger alert."

Not only is there a real possibility of intentional nuclear war between both countries, but also due to sloppy communications and/or computer errors, Russia and the U.S. have come within minutes of accidental nuclear war more than once.

Furthermore, last year the U.S withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which had required Russia (then the Soviet Union) and the U.S. to eliminate all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

"Mutual assured destruction" - appropriately known as MAD - is the military doctrine which attempts to reason that since the undeniable massive devastation caused by a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia - not to mention devastating the rest of the world - would be so great that neither nation would start such a war, is catastrophically foolish. It is nothing short of playing Russian roulette with the human race.

Add to these dangers the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review's statement that the U.S. will continue its policy to be the first to initiate a nuclear attack if it decides that its "vital interests" and those of its "allies and partners" are at risk.

On Jan. 23, 2020 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moved their famous Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight - warning how extremely near humanity is to a global catastrophic midnight posed by the increasing threats of nuclear war and climate change.

"We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds - not hours, or even minutes."

"It is the closest to Doomsday we have ever been in the history of the Doomsday Clock. We now face a true emergency - an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay," warned Rachel Bronson, Ph.D., president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In his message given at Nagasaki's Atomic Bomb Hypocenter Park last year, Pope Francis said, "One of the deepest longings of the human heart is for security, peace and stability. The possession of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction is not the answer to this desire; indeed they seem always to thwart it."

And with prophetic warning, Pope Francis declared: "The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I already said two years ago. We will be judged on this."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.

Francis said it is "perverse" to think the threat of nuclear weapons makes the world safer.

Calling their use a crime against the dignity of humanity and against any possible future of our common home, the pope called the use of atomic weapons immoral.

"Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth," the pope said.

"How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?

"How can we speak about peace even as we justify illegitimate actions by speeches filled with discrimination and hate?"

Francis said it made no sense to advance a policy of nuclear deterrence - counting on mutually assured destruction - to keep the peace.

"A world of peace, free from nuclear weapons, is the aspiration of millions of men and women everywhere," the pope said in Nagasaki.

Highlighting the billions of dollars spent each year on maintaining nuclear stockpiles and developing new weapons, Francis said it was not possible to be indifferent to the plea of our brothers and sisters in need.

"No one can turn a deaf ear to the plea of our brothers and sisters in need."

"No one can turn a blind eye to the ruin caused by a culture incapable of dialogue", he said.

The Holy See was among the first countries to sign and ratify the new U.N. nuclear prohibition treaty,

Francis himself went further than any pope before him in saying in 2017 that not only the use but the mere possession of atomic weapons is "to be condemned."

Tomohide Hirayama, a former Nagasaki resident who travelled from another prefecture to see the pope, said his religious faith was different but he fully supported Francis' call for a nuclear-free world.

"There were atomic attacks twice in history, and there should never be a third time," he said.

Sources

• Politico
• CNS

On August 6 - the 73rd anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan - I joined them, along with 19 members of several other mostly Catholic faith-based organizations.

Facing the Pentagon, we held signs calling for an end to all nuclear weapons. And we prayed to the God of peace (1 Thess 5:23) for the full conversion of all hearts and minds from war-making to peace-making.

Together with the Holy Spirit, we were hoping to awaken the consciences of military and civilian workers walking toward the Pentagon. But nearly everyone tried to ignore our Christ-centered message of peaceful nonviolence.

One member of our group was arrested for bravely moving outside of the Pentagon police designated protest zone, and onto the sidewalk used by workers entering the Pentagon. Her purpose was to make it harder for Pentagon employees to ignore her sign saying "Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A butchery of untold magnitude."

That statement was taken from soon to be canonized Pope Paul VI's World Day of Peace Message in 1976, in which he clearly condemned the nuclear bombing of Japan. He wrote, "If the consciousness of universal brotherhood truly penetrates into the hearts of men, will they still need to arm themselves to the point of becoming blind and fanatic killers of their brethren who in themselves are innocent, and of perpetrating, as a contribution to peace, butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945?"

On that day over 70,000 people - mostly civilians - were killed when a United States Boeing B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on that Japanese city.

Then on August 9, 1945 the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people - again mostly civilians. Nagasaki was the center of Japanese Catholicism. An added tragic irony here is that the U.S. crew that dropped this atomic bomb was "blessed" by a Catholic chaplain - the late Father George Zabelk, who later had a total conversion, spending the remainder of his life as a nonviolent Catholic peace activist.

Today, nine nations possess approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons. And especially dangerous is the fact that the U.S. and Russia have hundreds of nuclear weapons aimed at each other on high-alert status ready to be launched within minutes.

On July 7, 2017 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by an overwhelming majority of the world's nations. But unfortunately, the U.S. and the other eight nuclear weapon countries refuse to sign and ratify it. However, Catholics should prayerfully consider that the Holy See was equally the first nation to sign and ratified it.

To learn more about this immensely important treaty, and how you can help abolish nuclear weapons, visit the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons - recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. And please visit the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and Nonviolent Peaceforce.

As followers of the nonviolent Jesus, let us form our lives by the words of the famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "The God of peace is never glorified by human violence."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

Seventy years ago, on August 6, 1945, the single most destructive weapon ever unleashed upon human beings and the environment - the atomic bomb - was dropped by an American B-29 bomber on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing approximately 80,000 people.

Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

In a Sojourners Magazine interview, the late Fr. Zabelka explained, "If a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child's head, I would have told him absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful."

But in 1945 on Tinian Island in the South Pacific, where the atomic bomb group was based, planes took off around the clock, said Zabelka.

"Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands of children and civilians - and I said nothing. …

"Yes, I knew civilians were being destroyed … Yet I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to men who were doing it. …

"I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to publicly protest the consequences of these massive air raids.

"I was told the raids were necessary; told openly by the military and told implicitly by my Church's leadership. To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters, especially by a public body like the American bishops, is a stamp of approval. …

"Christians have been slaughtering each other, as well as non-Christians, for the past 1700 years, in large part because their priests, pastors and bishops have simply not told them that violence and homicide are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus."

After years of soul-searching, Fr. Zabelka's complete conversion from being a strong proponent of the "just-war theory" to a total pacifist was announced in a 1975 Christmas letter: "I must do an about face. … I have come to the conclusion that the truth of the Gospel is that Jesus was nonviolent and taught nonviolence as his way."

Fr. Zabelka dedicated the rest of his life to teaching, preaching and witnessing to Gospel nonviolence.

In 1983 he and a Jesuit priest, Fr. Jack Morris, organized and participated in the "Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage" starting at the nuclear submarine base in Bangor, Washington and ending on Christmas Eve 1984 in Bethlehem.

When Fr. Zabelka reached Maryland, I had the good fortune of hearing him personally share his inspiring story of conversion.

I strongly recommend reading Fr. Zabelka's entire Sojourners Magazine interview by going to this link http://bit.ly/1LQtdFX. And consider ordering from the Center for Christian Nonviolence (http://bit.ly/1H37EeF) the excellent DVD "Fr. George Zabelka: The Reluctant Prophet."

We can either choose to rationalize and condone violence and war, or we can help God build his kingdom of life and love.

In the biblical book of Deuteronomy, the author lays out a divine ultimatum for humanity: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him."

May we always choose life!

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.

Blessed are the Peacemakers
Violence is something we live with on a daily basis. It can be felt as an unkind word, experienced as a physical injury or extreme hunger, or seen in spectacular actions of armed killers on the television screen. The threat of unexpected violence can mean we live in fear and insecurity, or the shock of violence in far flung places can stop us from understanding what life is like for people living in other places. Fear creates a barrier between peoples and can fuel further violence, prejudice and injustice.

For Christians, called to be peacemakers, violence creates an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity is to express our faith through actions to end such violence. The challenge is to overcome the fear and discern the best action to take. Jesus talked often of peace. He affirmed the importance of peacemaking in the Beatitudes (Matt 5:9). Biblical shalom is peace with justice. Jesus, named the Prince of Peace, is concerned with the full spectrum of peace from the inner self to justice for the planet.

Promoting just peace in an age where there is increased competition over shrinking resources and a greater than ever capacity for violence requires renewed global action. In the Pacific peace remains a priority issue, especially for those countries seeking self-determination and dealing with the continuing damage from nuclear testing. Churches were very much part of the action that led to the nuclear free legislation being passed into New Zealand law twenty-five years ago this year. There is more to be done.

Peace Sunday
This year Peace Sunday falls on August 5. We remember the terrible damage unleashed by the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by a US B-29 bomber on August 6, 1945. Three days later another followed hitting Nagasaki on August 9. Images and tesimony of those who witnessed and survived remind us of the magnitude of the human potenial for destrucion present in such technology. The testing of nuclear weapons has also created long term damage. Decades after the first nuclear test on Moruroa Atoll on 2 July, 1966, the workers are sill seeking some compensaion for the many cancers and health problems caused by the 193 tests on Maohi land. Moruroa E Tatou coninues to campaign for fair compensation for the workers and their families through the courts. Cracks in the atoll pose continuing ecological hazards. Read more

Sources

• Christian World Service
• Image: Peace on Earth