We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.” When asked to account for this incredible situation, in which he and his companions were spared, he said: “We believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. To the doctors’ amazement, Father Schiffer and the other priests had no radiation or ill-effects from the bomb. Many of the Japanese people had blisters and sores from the radiation. After the conquest of the Americans, their army doctors and scientists explained to him that his body would begin to deteriorate because of the radiation. Hundreds of thousands were killed or maimed by the explosion. As far as he could tell, there was nothing else physically wrong with him. The only harm to him was that he could feel a few pieces of glass in the back of his neck. He looked around and there was NOTHING in any direction: the railroad station and buildings in all directions were leveled to the ground.įather Hubert Schiffer with the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Robert Lewis. The next thing he remembered, he opened his eyes and he was lying on the ground. 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.” Then, in the words of Father Schiffer: “Suddenly, a terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunderstroke. His first thought was that it was an explosion in the harbor (this was a major port where the Japanese refueled their submarines.) He had just sliced a grapefruit and put his spoon into the grapefruit when there was a bright flash of light. On the morning of August 6, 1945, he had just finished Mass, went into the rectory and sat down at the breakfast table. As I chauffeured him around he told me stories of his life, especially of the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. I met Father Schiffer in the late 1970s at the Tri-City Airport in Saginaw, Mich., as he was going to give a talk for the Blue Army Novena/Triduum. Father Paul Ruge, spiritual director at the National Blue Army Shrine, wrote this account of his conversations with one of the Jesuit survivors, Father Hubert Schiffer. Nine days later on August 15, the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, U.S.
However, the church building and eight Jesuit priests stationed there survived. More than 100,000 people were killed instantly and thousands more died months later from the effects of radiation. The bomb exploded half a mile from the Jesuit Church of Our Lady’s Assumption. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m.
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