ROSARY MIRACLE AT HIROSHIMA
Only 1 Kilometer from Atomic Blast, Jesuits and Their
House Survive
Compiled by Mark Strabinski
The atomic blast at Hiroshima. The Jesuits say, "We
believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived
and prayed the Rosary daily in that home."
There was a home eight blocks (about 1 kilometer) from
where the A-Bomb went off in Hiroshima, Japan. This home had a church attached
to it which was completely destroyed, but the home survived, and so did the
eight German missionaries who prayed the Rosary in that house faithfully every
day. These men were missionaries to the Japanese people, they were
non-military, but because Germany and Japan were allies during WWII they were
permitted to live and minister within Japan during the war.
Not only did they all survive with (at most) relatively
minor injuries, but they all lived well past that awful day with no radiation
sickness, no loss of hearing, nor any other visible long term defects or
maladies.
[Even more astonishing is that the story was to be
repeated a few days later at Nagasaki, the second Japanese city to be hit by an
atomic bomb. In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki the survivors were Catholic
religious. Most other buildings were leveled to the ground, even at 3 times the
distance, but in both cases their houses stood – even with some windows intact!
All other people, bar a handful of scattered mutilated survivors, even at
thrice the distance from the explosion, died instantly. Those within a radius
ten times the distance of the Jesuits from the explosion were exposed to fierce
radiation and died within days.]
Naturally, they were interviewed numerous times (Fr.
Schiffer, a survivor, said he was interviewed over 200 times) by scientists and
health care people about their remarkable experience. The Jesuits say, "We
believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived
and prayed the Rosary daily in that home."
Of course, the secular scientists are speechless and
incredulous at this explanation. They are sure there is some "real"
explanation. But at the same time over 50 years later the scientists are still
absolutely bamboozled when it comes to finding a plausible scenario to explain
the missionaries' unique escape from the hellish power of that bomb.
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FR. SCHIFFER OF HIROSHIMA
by Father Paul Ruge, OFMI
At 2:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber took off
from the island of Tinian to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan. At 8:15 a.m.
the bomb exploded eight city blocks from the Jesuit Church of Our Lady's
Assumption in Hiroshima. Half a million people were annihilated. However, the
church and four Jesuit Fathers stationed there survived: Fathers Hugo Lassalle,
Kleinsorge, Cieslik and Schiffer. (Note: All other accounts state clearly that
there were eight Jesuits stationed in this home not four -- and it is well
known that all eight survived -- the author of this present article apparently
only had the names of four of them, for instance Fr. Arrupe is left out of the
list -- and at this writing, I have not been able to find the names of the
other three Jesuits. end of note.) According to the experts they "ought to
be dead," being within a one-mile radius of the explosion. Nine days
later, on August 15, Feast of Our Lady's Assumption, U.S. forces were ordered
to cease fire.
I met Fr. Schiffer [says Father Ruge] in the late 70s at
the Tri-City Airport in Saginaw, Michigan, as he was going to give a talk for
the Blue Army Novena/Triduum. As I chauffeured him around he told me stories of
his life, especially of the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. On the morning of
August 6, 1945, he had just finished Mass, went into the rectory and sat down
at the breakfast table, and had just sliced a grapefruit, and had just put his
spoon into the grapefruit when there was a flash of light. His first thought
was that it was an explosion in the harbor (this was a major port where the
Japanese refueled their submarines.)
Then, in the words of Fr. Schiffer: "Suddenly, a
terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunder stroke. 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."
The next thing he remembered, he opened his eyes and he
was laying on the ground. He looked around and there was NOTHING in any direction:
the railroad station and buildings in all in all directions were leveled to the
ground. The only physical harm to himself was that he could feel a few pieces
of glass in the back of his neck. As far as he could tell, there was nothing
else physically wrong with himself. Many thousands were killed or maimed by the
explosion. 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. Many of the Japanese people had blisters and sores from the
radiation. To the doctors' amazement, Fr. Schiffer's body contained no radiation or ill-effects
from the bomb. Fr. Schiffer attributes this to devotion to the Blessed
Mother, and his daily Fatima Rosary. He feels that he received a protective
shield from the Blessed Mother which protected him from all radiation and
ill-effects.
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TESTIMONY BY DR. STEPHEN RINEHART
Dr. Stephen Rinehart works in the US Department of
Defense (DOD) -- a man with a professional resume of impressive scientific
credentials. The following is his commentary.
At 1 kilometer the bulk temperature was in excess of
20,000 to 30,000 degrees F (transients in microseconds greater than 100,000 F
perhaps as high as 1,000,000 F within 1 kilometer -- depends on construction
details and you are inside the fireball) and the blast wave would have hit at
sonic velocity with pressures on building (at 1 kilometer) greater than 600
psi. and buildings were demolished over a mile from epicenter.
The "fireball diameter" is probably on the order of two to four
kilometers (depends on certain definitions). No way any human could have
survived nor should anything have left been standing at 1 kilometer. Yet, at about
ten to fifteen kilometers I saw the brick walls standing from an elementary
school (some phasing due to bomb's pineapple construction) and I think there
were a few badly burned survivors at ten to fifteen kilometers (all -- except
the Jesuits -- died within fifteen years of some form of cancer). Also, I think
there were Jesuits that were near epicenter and a panorama view from epicenter
at Shima Hospital did show some kind of two story house totally intact (at
least from what I could make out and it looked to me the windows were in
place!?
Also there was a church with walls still standing but
roof gone a few hundred yards away!? DOD never commented officially on this and
I suspect it was classified and never discussed in open literature. I think it
is possible the Jesuits were asked not to say anything either at the time.
The Hiroshima atomic bomb was an air blast burst (i.e.,
detonated at altitude between 600 yds. to 1000 yds.) as opposed to an atomic
ground burst (i.e., designed to crater a certain area -- possibly against
deeply buried targets). Two of these types of weapons were built and the other
was dropped on Nagasaki. The third weapon was larger and intended for a ground
blast [Tokyo Harbor?] but was never used on Japan and no target ever
identified. The bombing order was against cities not specific military targets.
The cities selected were Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Nagasaki.
In reviewing the damage patterns and blast
characteristics of the Hiroshima blast, it appears this weapon was detonated at
a height of 0.6 to 1.0 kilometer [Highest probable fireball diameter is about
1.4 kilometer]. This weapon was detonated at this height to produce the maximum
damage area from the fireball (maximum sustained fire/air blast damage from the
propagating temperatures and air blast pressures in the shock wave front).
However, the epicenter was not the area with the greatest damage since the
weapon was designed to "spread the fireball effects" over a wide
area. The strongest building [steel reinforced frame] was Hiroshima Bank
building which was gutted inside by fire 250 meters from hypocenter of bomb but
its walls remained standing but the window frames were blown away.
The overriding conclusion from my review of the weapon
effects at Hiroshima is that this weapon was intentionally designed and
deployed to kill or maim as many humans as possible in residential housing (or
unprotected outside) over the widest possible area for the weapon's size (while
minimizing radiation effects from contaminated debris being thrown up into
atmosphere).
Since much of the Hiroshima industrial capacity was also
located in unreinforced brick structures this type of air blast would also
destroy any unreinforced masonry or brick buildings. One of the most flammable
items on a person is their hair and clothing. Much of the clothing at this time
was cotton (or blended cotton) which would be considered highly flammable. I
suddenly came to the realization that the intent of propagating a fireball at
this height was to be able to set fire to a person's clothing (and all types of
fabric) at relatively long distances from the blast's epicenter.
The air blast would be felt for miles (blowing out
windows and damaging most all structures by cracking the walls) and terrorize
the remaining population. Hence, the description by those who survived of
seeing burned bodies everywhere (or charred skeletons) and skin that was
shredded into strips is consistent with the bombing order to hit a populated
city in the center without specific regard to military objectives.
It appears the Jesuits (at one kilometer from the
geometric epicenter) had greater than 90% probability of being outside the
atomic bomb's "plasma" since it was an air burst but they were on the
"hairy edge." Depending on the actual height of detonation, the
Jesuits must have had the edge of the fireball literally outside their window.
Assuming they were outside the plasma, their residence should still have been
utterly destroyed (temp > 2000 F and air blast pressures > 100 psi). In
contrast, unreinforced masonry or brick walls (representative of commercial
construction) are destroyed at 3 psi, which will also cause car damage and
burst windows. At 10 psi, a human will experience severe lung and heart
damage, burst eardrums and at 20 psi your limbs can be blown off. Your head
will be blown off by 40 psi and no residential or unreinforced commercial
construction would be left standing. At 80 psi even reinforced concrete is
heavily damaged and no human would be alive because your skull would be
crushed. All the cotton clothes would be on fire at 350 F
(probably at 275 F) and your lungs would be inoperative within a minute
breathing air (even for a few seconds) at these temperatures.
CONCLUSION
There are no physical laws to explain why the Jesuits
were untouched in the Hiroshima air blast. There is no other actual or test
data where a structure such as this was not totally destroyed at this standoff
distance by an atomic weapon. All who were at this range from the epicenter
should have received enough radiation to be dead within at most a matter of
minutes if nothing else happened to them. There is no known way to design a uranium-235 atomic bomb, which could leave such a large
discrete area intact while destroying everything around it immediately outside
the fireball (by shaping the plasma).
From a scientific viewpoint, what happened to those
Jesuits at Hiroshima still defies all human logic from the laws of physics as
understood today (or at any time in the future). It must be concluded that some
other
(external) force was present whose power and/or
capability to transform energy and matter as it relates to humans is beyond
current comprehension.
From the standpoint of the current universal
"string" theory in physics (relating atomic scale effects to
macroscopic world) it suggests that the physical "strings" (i.e.,
bodies) of the Jesuits and the "energy strings"
representing the house's physical matter were either
transformed at the moment of the blast into an opposing energy field (to cancel
the weapon's effects and then transformed back on a time scale totally
imperceptible to humans) or an enormous external force field was present
which precisely cancelled the weapon's effects over the totally irregular
geometry of the residential house including protecting the occupants.
Either way it is a plausible argument for the existence
of a Creator who left His "calling card" at Hiroshima.
From the February 2007 issue of
Catholic Family News
