After the Second World War had ended, my father, who was a Master Sergeant and a cook, was sent to visit Nagasaki, near the southernmost part of Japan. It was, as you know, the target for the second atomic bomb.
Last night I looked at the black and white pictures which he had taken of the devastation. It was horrific, unbelievable and almost impossible for a seventeen year old American soldier from Upton to understand. As you know, 37,000 people died in Nagasaki in 1945.
But what you may not have known is that three and a half centuries before that, twenty-six Japanese martyrs were crucified on a hill looking down upon Nagasaki. Franciscan and Jesuit priests, brothers, alongside catechists, doctors and servants, old men and innocent little children—all having died for their love of Jesus and their willingness to give up their lives for him.
So let us learn from them, and especially for the Jesuit Brother, who from the cross he was tied to declared to those gathered: ‘Just ask Christ to help you to become happy. And if you obey him, you will be.’
