"I pray and strive for this bell of peace to continue ringing until the last day of the world."
- Nagasaki survivor and Servant of God, Dr. Takashi Nagai (1908-1951)
I've always considered August 15 a beautiful day. In the Catholic calendar, it's the day we commemorate the Virgin Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven. I've celebrated this feast in the Roman Catholic tradition in Italy and in Mexico, where faithful surround statues of the Virgin Mary with apples. I've also celebrated this feast, the Dormition of the Theotokos, in the Byzantine Catholic tradition, which includes a traditional blessing of flowers and herbs.
This year, in 2025, August 15 is significant in another way, for it marks 80 years to the day that Emperor Hirohito's prerecorded, crackly radio broadcast of reached the ears of all Japanese citizens announcing his surrender in World War II, a surrender formalized on September 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, today berthed in Pearl Harbor.
Memorial Service held at the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan, November 23, 1945 (Nagasaki City Office/Wikimedia)
August 2025 also marks 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the latter of which I discussed in my April post, 40 Days in God's Dojo with a Nagasaki survivor. At 11:02am local time on August 9, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded about 500 meters above the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, almost completely destroying the church, toppling its two bell towers, and damaging one of its two bells. When citizens rebuilt the massive church in 1959, they lifted only one bell into the south tower. The north tower remained bell-less.
Until now.
Last Saturday, August 9, 2025, at exactly 11:02am local time, TWO bells rang out at the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki for the first time in 80 years.
What changed?
The Nagasaki Bell Project: Dr. James Nolan Jr. of Williams College donated the new bell, "Kateri," to the Archdiocese of Nagasaki, paid for entirely by donations from U.S. Catholics.
President of the St. Kateri Institute, Dr. Nolan is also the grandson of Dr. James Nolan of the Manhattan Project, responsible for developing the atomic bomb. After finding his grandfather's personal letters and photographs, including the bombed Urakami Cathedral taken when his grandfather became one of the first persons from the U.S. to view the damage, he researched and wrote Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age. Weaving his grandfather's story into the narrative, Dr. Nolan examined the moral and ethical dilemmas facing the physicians associated with the Manhattan Project.
Inspired by a May 2023 interview with Nagasaki Catholics during which they suggested that U.S. Catholics replace the bell as a sign of solidarity, Dr. Nolan raised $125,000 from more than 600 donations; the bell, cast in St. Louis, reached Japan in July and was raised into the north tower on July 16, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I regret that I did not have an opportunity to donate.
Front page of the concert program. Photo by author.
I first learned about the Nagasaki Bell Project when my family and I attended a concert at our parish on August 3: "'The Bells of Nagasaki': Music for Contemplation in Commemoration of the Installation of the New Bell at Nagasaki Urakami Cathedral." Anli Lin Tong, a parishioner and celebrated concert pianist whose late father survived the atomic blast in Nagasaki, organized the event, which included several talented musicians and singers in our choir. Her goal was to elicit the sensation of tolling bells.
As we sat under the watchful eyes of the life size Crucified Christ, Anli Lin Tong told us that the Bells of Nagasaki are a symbol of hope for world peace and a reminder that we must never cease to ring the bell of the Gospel.
Concert pianist Anli Lin Tong performing in "Bells of Nagasaki": Music for Contemplation. on August 3, 2025, at St. John Fisher Parish, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. Photo by author
The program included several pieces by Rachmaninoff; John Donne's poem, "For Whom the Bell Tolls;" a selection from Frank LaRocca - composer of the "Mass of the Americas," which had led some to call him the most significant Catholic composer of our time; a rendition of "Ave Maria" attributed to Guilio Caccini or Vladimi Vavilov; and Franz Liszt. Holding my daughter's hand, I wept as the music swept over us.
Open page of "Bells of Nagasaki": Music for Contemplation program showing "Ave Maria" and Liszt's "Concert Etude in D-Flat Major," after which we paused to observe a moment of silence in anticipation of the ringing of the bells of the Urakami Cathedral on August 9 at 11:02am local time. Photo taken by author during concert
The highlight of concert was the choir singing "The Bells of Nagasaki" in Japanese, composed in 1949 and for a time played continually over the loudspeaker at the Nagasaki train station. This was Anli Lin Tong's father's favorite song; its words reflect the perspective of Servant of God, Dr. Takashi Nagai, who lost his wife in the bombing.
Even while looking to the brightest sky,
I painfully feel the deepest sorrow.
Within the ever-undulating human world,
I am just an ephemeral wildflower.
Summoned by God, my wife has returned to heaven,
Leaving me along in this world.
When I look at the rosary left as her memento,
I only find the traces of my tears.
While I confess sins in my heart,
The moon shines brightly in the deepening night.
Even on a pillar in the poor man's house,
There hangs a statue of the Holy Virgin Mary.
Open page of "Bells of Nagasaki": Music for Contemplation program listing the Music Guild performers and the English translation of the song, provided by parishioners at St. John Fisher Parish, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
I would like to close with the Solemn Peace Memorial Mass at Urakami Cathedral on August 9, concelebrated by two U.S. cardinals and two U.S. archbishops and during which the bells rang out together for the first time in 80 years at 11:02am local time. At that Mass, a group of Catholic university leaders and students from the U.S. who were part of a "Pilgrimage of Peace" commemorating the 80th anniversary of the bombings joined Japanese Catholics to pray for peace and an end to nuclear weapons.
At 80th anniversary Mass in Nagasaki, people urged to bring Christ's love, peace to world (from Angeles, a Catholic news source in Los Angeles, CA:
"As the Peace Memorial Mass at Urakami Cathedral began, Archbishop [Peter Michiaki] Nakamura blessed with incense two damaged religious artifacts that had been recovered in the rubble of the original cathedral after the bombing -- the head of a wooden statue of Mary and a wooden crucifix with the figure of Jesus missing his head and limbs.
Those two items were displayed near the altar during the Mass, and the archbishop framed his homily around them. He told the story of a church in Germany damaged by bombing during World War II, and the arms of Jesus on its cross were missing. After the war, they kept the cross where it was, and in the place of the cross beam where Jesus's arms were missing, they put an inscription in German that read, 'I have no hands but yours.'
'A similar thing happened here in Nagasaki. The head, hands and feet of Jesus on the cross that you see next to this altar are also missing. Mary's head is still there, but her face is blackened, and her eyes are gone. It was our hands that started wars and created weapons of mass destruction,' Archbishop Nakamura said.
Noting that people use their hands, feet and minds to hurt others, Nagasaki's archbishop said, 'We must work together with the hands of Jesus. More than that, we must live as the hands of Jesus. ... Our hope lies in God's hands. Let us live as God's hands.'
Concluding his homily, Archbishop Nakamura said, 'Our peace depends on what we do. ... Our peace depends on how we walk. It depends on our feet, our way of thinking, our perspective, and our way of life. In other words, our peace depends on living like Christ. This means thinking, speaking, acting and loving like Christ.
'For that reason, let us once again begin our true journey by gazing upon Jesus and Mary who survived the bombing, and considering how they became like this out of love for us.'"