On the 9th of August, 1945, an all-Christian B-29 bomber crew, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the blessings of its Catholic and Protestant chaplains. In the plane’s hold was the second of the only two nuclear bombs to ever be used against human targets in wartime. The primary target, Kokura, Japan, was clouded over, so the plane, named Bock’s Car, headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. St. Mary’s Urakami Cathedral, a massive Nagasaki landmark that the bombardier had been briefed on for weeks before the bombing, was briefly seen through the thin clouds and targeted as ground zero.
The Urakami Cathedral was the oldest and largest Christian church in the Orient, and Nagasaki was the oldest and most influential Christian community in Japan, having been founded by Francis Xavier in 1549. The Nagasaki Christian community was legendary in the history of Oriental Christianity because of its two centuries of catacomb-like existence during the horrible persecutions by the Imperial Japanese government - including mass crucifixions of faithful Christians who refused to give up the faith. Despite the persecutions, and the outlawing of Christianity (it was a capital crime to be a Christian for 250 years), Nagasaki Christianity survived and ultimately flourished – until 11:02 am, August 9, 1945.
What Imperial Japan could not do over two centuries of brutal persecution, fellow American Christians did in 9 seconds. The Cathedral was destroyed by the plutonium bomb and thousands of Nagasaki Christians were incinerated or vaporized and the survivors radiated causing radiation-induced disease and deformities among the victims and their progeny which continues to this day as a gruesome testament to the horrors of nuclear war. But the spirit of Nagasaki Christianity lives on.
On the 9th of August, 1943, Franz Jaegerstaetter, a devout Austrian Christian pacifist, was beheaded by German Christians for refusing to fight and kill in Hitler’s army. Because of his conscientious objection to war and killing, he had been abandoned by his spiritual leaders as well as his family and friends, all of whom had tried to convince him to do his patriotic duty and kill for “Volk, Fuhrer und Vaterland.” They all tried to convince him that his commitment to Christian nonviolence was futile. Instead, being obedient to his God rather than to men, he died by guillotine at Brandenburg Prison, at the hands of obedient baptized Christian soldiers, whose belt buckles read “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us). And yet Jaegerstaetter’s spirit lives on.
On the 9th of August, 1942, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish Catholic Carmelite nun, was murdered by fellow German Christians at Auschwitz. Gott Mit Uns was stamped on their belt buckles too. German Christianity had, by its collaboration or by its silence, endorsed the Nazi’s ruthless forms of nationalism, militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and its “legal” right to kill other children of God. Teresa has since been sainted in the Roman Catholic Church, and her spirit lives on.
The 509th Composite Group, whose responsibilities were to deliver the two radioactive weapons of mass destruction, had two Christian chaplains. The Catholic chaplain, George Zabelka, spoke of societal attitudes at the time: “The whole structure of secular, religious and military society told me clearly that it was all right to ‘let the Japs have it.’ God was on our side.” Father Zabelka knew what his bomber crews were doing to innocent people and their defenseless cities in the summer of 1945, and yet “I said nothing.” He regretted that silence for the rest of his life.
Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, the foremost apostle of Christian nonviolence in America today, and the person most responsible for Zabelka’s conversion, has dedicated his life and ministry to raising the consciousness of the church about the truths of Jesus’ nonviolent teachings. McCarthy says:
Today, as for most of the last 1700 years, most Christians continue to justify as consistent with the spirit of Christ those energies, understandings, and emotions which lead inevitably to August 9. Today most Christians still do not unequivocally teach what Jesus unequivocally taught on the subject of violence. Today most Christians still refuse to proclaim that violence is not the Christian way, that violence is not the Holy way, that violence is not the way of Jesus.
Every summer, to call the Christian community to repent and to return to the truth that violence is not the way of Christ, Father McCarthy leads a fast from solid foods for 40 days, breaking it on August 9.
It is suggested that sincere Christian peacemakers remember all the victims of past August Ninths in their prayers during the Sixty-First anniversary commemorations on August 9, 2006. It is hoped that conscientious Christians consider a day-long fast in remembrance of the hundreds of millions of war dead, the hundreds of millions of physically and psychologically traumatized survivors of war violence, and the billions of war-related who may be spiritually dead, both soldier-perpetrators, their civilian or military victims, the bystanders and the second and third generations of innocents who continue to suffer from the starvation, homelessness, poverty, sickness, hopelessness and domestic abuse that follows every war.
Gary G. Kohls, MD - for Every Church A Peace Church http://www.ecapc.org
Please scroll down for UPDATES.
Please also see:
Christian Just War Theory and Moral Laxism:
A Chronically Misleading Episcopal Witness
Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://tcrnews2.com/McCarthy3.html
ST. JOAN OF ARC
A Warning to End the Constantinian Era;
Not A Loophole to Continue the Constantinian Era
By Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://tcrnews2.com/McCarthy2.html
Other writings of Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://centerforchristiannonviolence.org/resources/resources.php
TCRNews Musings http://tcrnewscom.blogspot.com
Al-Bushra http://www.al-bushra.org
The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation http://www.hcef.org
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story,
presented by Dr. Gary G. Kohls
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2518&blz=1
Israel and A Nuclear Middle East, by Israel Rafalovich
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2519&blz=1
War Unites Lebanon's Muslims, Christians
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=2502&blz=1
Edward Teller, 'Father of the Hydrogen Bomb', has Died at the Age of 95,
by Christiane N. Martens
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1034&blz=1
UPDATES
Nagasaki Warns against Nuclear Arms on A-bomb Anniversary
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0809-03.htm
The Urakami Cathedral was the oldest and largest Christian church in the Orient, and Nagasaki was the oldest and most influential Christian community in Japan, having been founded by Francis Xavier in 1549. The Nagasaki Christian community was legendary in the history of Oriental Christianity because of its two centuries of catacomb-like existence during the horrible persecutions by the Imperial Japanese government - including mass crucifixions of faithful Christians who refused to give up the faith. Despite the persecutions, and the outlawing of Christianity (it was a capital crime to be a Christian for 250 years), Nagasaki Christianity survived and ultimately flourished – until 11:02 am, August 9, 1945.
What Imperial Japan could not do over two centuries of brutal persecution, fellow American Christians did in 9 seconds. The Cathedral was destroyed by the plutonium bomb and thousands of Nagasaki Christians were incinerated or vaporized and the survivors radiated causing radiation-induced disease and deformities among the victims and their progeny which continues to this day as a gruesome testament to the horrors of nuclear war. But the spirit of Nagasaki Christianity lives on.
On the 9th of August, 1943, Franz Jaegerstaetter, a devout Austrian Christian pacifist, was beheaded by German Christians for refusing to fight and kill in Hitler’s army. Because of his conscientious objection to war and killing, he had been abandoned by his spiritual leaders as well as his family and friends, all of whom had tried to convince him to do his patriotic duty and kill for “Volk, Fuhrer und Vaterland.” They all tried to convince him that his commitment to Christian nonviolence was futile. Instead, being obedient to his God rather than to men, he died by guillotine at Brandenburg Prison, at the hands of obedient baptized Christian soldiers, whose belt buckles read “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us). And yet Jaegerstaetter’s spirit lives on.
On the 9th of August, 1942, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish Catholic Carmelite nun, was murdered by fellow German Christians at Auschwitz. Gott Mit Uns was stamped on their belt buckles too. German Christianity had, by its collaboration or by its silence, endorsed the Nazi’s ruthless forms of nationalism, militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and its “legal” right to kill other children of God. Teresa has since been sainted in the Roman Catholic Church, and her spirit lives on.
The 509th Composite Group, whose responsibilities were to deliver the two radioactive weapons of mass destruction, had two Christian chaplains. The Catholic chaplain, George Zabelka, spoke of societal attitudes at the time: “The whole structure of secular, religious and military society told me clearly that it was all right to ‘let the Japs have it.’ God was on our side.” Father Zabelka knew what his bomber crews were doing to innocent people and their defenseless cities in the summer of 1945, and yet “I said nothing.” He regretted that silence for the rest of his life.
Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, the foremost apostle of Christian nonviolence in America today, and the person most responsible for Zabelka’s conversion, has dedicated his life and ministry to raising the consciousness of the church about the truths of Jesus’ nonviolent teachings. McCarthy says:
Today, as for most of the last 1700 years, most Christians continue to justify as consistent with the spirit of Christ those energies, understandings, and emotions which lead inevitably to August 9. Today most Christians still do not unequivocally teach what Jesus unequivocally taught on the subject of violence. Today most Christians still refuse to proclaim that violence is not the Christian way, that violence is not the Holy way, that violence is not the way of Jesus.
Every summer, to call the Christian community to repent and to return to the truth that violence is not the way of Christ, Father McCarthy leads a fast from solid foods for 40 days, breaking it on August 9.
It is suggested that sincere Christian peacemakers remember all the victims of past August Ninths in their prayers during the Sixty-First anniversary commemorations on August 9, 2006. It is hoped that conscientious Christians consider a day-long fast in remembrance of the hundreds of millions of war dead, the hundreds of millions of physically and psychologically traumatized survivors of war violence, and the billions of war-related who may be spiritually dead, both soldier-perpetrators, their civilian or military victims, the bystanders and the second and third generations of innocents who continue to suffer from the starvation, homelessness, poverty, sickness, hopelessness and domestic abuse that follows every war.
Gary G. Kohls, MD - for Every Church A Peace Church http://www.ecapc.org
Please scroll down for UPDATES.
Please also see:
Christian Just War Theory and Moral Laxism:
A Chronically Misleading Episcopal Witness
Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://tcrnews2.com/McCarthy3.html
ST. JOAN OF ARC
A Warning to End the Constantinian Era;
Not A Loophole to Continue the Constantinian Era
By Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://tcrnews2.com/McCarthy2.html
Other writings of Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
http://centerforchristiannonviolence.org/resources/resources.php
TCRNews Musings http://tcrnewscom.blogspot.com
Al-Bushra http://www.al-bushra.org
The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation http://www.hcef.org
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story,
presented by Dr. Gary G. Kohls
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2518&blz=1
Israel and A Nuclear Middle East, by Israel Rafalovich
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2519&blz=1
War Unites Lebanon's Muslims, Christians
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=2502&blz=1
Edward Teller, 'Father of the Hydrogen Bomb', has Died at the Age of 95,
by Christiane N. Martens
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1034&blz=1
UPDATES
Nagasaki Warns against Nuclear Arms on A-bomb Anniversary
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0809-03.htm