Posted on 04/09/2026 5:31:06 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
On a bright but cloudy morning on 9 August 1945, a B-29 bomber, named “Bocks Car”, of the US Army Air Force, flew over the Japanese port city of Nagasaki and dropped a highly radioactive Plutonium implosion bomb onto the city, 300 yards from the second largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the Far East, Urakami Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary...
This was the nuclear bomb that went on giving for years after it was dropped – giving to the people of Nagasaki the horrible after-effects of nuclear radiation that slowly kill victims for years... Children were blasted to tiny pieces of mangled flesh and fractured bone by a huge bomb dropped right on top of them...
Very little research was needed to discover that the city of Nagasaki was the one city of Japan that was most likely to be friendly to the Western Allies, not only because it was a port city where, even when Japan was closed and isolated, foreigners would still enter and visit, but also because of a vitally important cultural reason.
That vital reason was that the city of Nagasaki was the very epicentre of Japanese Catholicism.
Construction of Urakami Cathedral began in 1895, after the long-standing ban on Christianity was lifted.
It became the Co-Cathedral of Nagasaki together with Oura Cathedral.
Both cathedrals were blown to bits when Bocks Car dropped its deadly pay-load on the unsuspecting capital of Japanese Christianity, the one part of Japan that could reasonably be expected to be most favourable to the Western Allies. Nolan notes these numbers:
Of the approximately 12,000 Christians living in Urakami at the time, 8,500 were killed, including several dozen parishioners and two Catholic priests, who were hearing confessions in the cathedral that morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at onepeterfive.com ...
You are welcome.
Happened a couple-three hundred years ago.
Shimabara Rebellion. 1600’s
People who dunk on the US or for some reason the pilots hated the church are very far off the mark(church steeple).
My grandparents hated Mitsubishi and the shipyard was right there.Plus the pother factories. I don’t see how they decided to blow Japanese Christians.
Thank you for posting this article I never knew about the cathedral.
Thanks for sharing those links. Lots of info, but concise and right to the point! Best summation I have read.
No.
Kyoto was the ancient Capitol and was not going to be bombed.
The 2nd mission was a total CF. The plane was named “Bockscar” single word. I think this article has a lot of BS. The decisions on which cities were candidates was complicated and I doubt Catholicism had anything to do with it, other than to give planners pause. “Let’s nuke them mackeral snappers” was not part of the calculus.
General Groves wrote one of the best books “Now It Can Be Told”
The US spent extraordinary amounts of money on this crash program. The emphasis from the beginning clearly was “This weapon may shorten the war”. They were not at all certain it could be made to work. But they still spent $2 billion 1940 dollars on the effort. Throughout the project there was a “hurry hurry” aspect where engineering test prototype and normal development was suspended in favor of get it in production. Electromagnetic and gas diffusion and plutonium reactors, none of it had been done before. Only microscopic amounts of plutonium had ever been made. They needed anywhere from ten to 100 pounds, physicists weren’t sure. A factor of ten.
That explains 1 feature film and 2 TV films on the Manhattan Project. Thnx!
GPS depends on satellites. The first one of those was still 12 years in the future in 1945. The GPS project was started in 1973 and became fully operational in 1993.
Extermino, -are in Latin does not mean "to wipe out" or "to kill without mercy". It means "to drive out" or "to expel". You can see that from the word itself: "ex-" (out of, out from) and "termino" (from "terminus" = border, frontier).
The same decrees which ordered the "extermination" of heretics also talked about how "exterminated" heretics who repented were to be received back into the Church.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of FR anti-Catholic, anti-historical distortions and misrepresentations.
Weather.
The pilot was Major Charles W. Sweeney and the Co-Pilot was 2nd Lt. Frederick J. Olivi.
Both were Roman Catholic.
In fact, they had a Roman Catholic priest bless the plane before takeoff.
So much for the theory that the bombing to be an anti-Catholic plot.
Good Lord, man, you didn’t see humor in that?
Please re read my post.
Imagine the tirade if they were Prots!
Far enough. I have seen both words used, and usually note that, as in my reply a couple weeks ago in citing
Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate [another trans. reads "expel"] in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. Canons of the Ecumenical Fourth Lateran Council (canon 3), 1215: (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp, a RC school)And of course, RC rulers did choose. As did some Prots. As do militant Muslims.
And some RC rulers chose "exterminate."
(did have)
I think you meant “did not” 😀
Indeed. "Good thing Rome did [NOT] have nukes (nor early Prots)"
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