A Saint for Nagasaki

February 2025

“Hell! This is hell!... It really was the world of the dead.”

Dr. Takashi Nagai

On August 9, 1945, “Fat Man,” a plutonium bomb yielding twenty-one kilotons, exploded five hundred meters above the Urakami district of Nagasaki, Japan. The explosion vaporized thousands of its citizens, including a lovely young wife and mother of two. Her name was Midori Nagai.

Shortly after the bomb exploded, Midori’s husband was blown off his feet by the blast and found himself buried under a pile of broken glass and rubble. Struggling to pull himself out from under the debris, he was completely disoriented. In an instant, everything was surreal and hellish. Not knowing what happened or what to do, Dr. Takashi Nagai started by looking for some colleagues at the University of Nagasaki Medical School. As they gathered, they realized this explosion was much more than a local bombing. The whole city seemed to be a bleak wasteland. The sky glowed with hellfire, and the walking dead were arriving by the score; many of them naked and burned severely. Dr. Nagai and his colleagues relied on their training and simply started by caring for the ones who came across their path; each with gruesome radiation burns and other horrific injuries.

The bomb was something which no one could imagine and over time Nagai realized it was one born from the power of atomic energy. Radiation was everywhere! Because he was a trained radiologist and studied radiation, he knew that this was going to get worse. Exposure at all levels would develop at different rates. Those who had little or no immediate symptoms would develop serious illness. The sick and the dying, the scorched and the suffering would keep coming. He knew also that he was exposed, and there was a good chance that radiation poisoning would emerge over time. After three days of impossibly hard work caring for this endless stream of wounded, Nagai believed it was best to get out of the city and into the countryside where his two children were staying to be kept safe from conventional bombs and a feared Allied invasion. In the countryside, he believed there was a chance for some level of healing. First, he had to get home and find his wife. When he arrived home, all that was left were some charred bones. She was practically obliterated and his only consolation was that she probably died instantly. So, he gathered her remains and carried his beloved Midori with him. To the countryside he went and others joined him.

Raised in the traditions of Shintoism, Takashi Nagai was devout in his love for his Japanese culture and fastidious in keeping its customs and traditions. He served, for a time, as a physician with the Japanese army in Manchuria and realized that the martial life was not for him. He loved his country and its people, but did not have the stomach for the cruel violence he saw. In time, he was allowed to return to serve Japan in his practice and study of medicine in Nagasaki. Happy in his marriage and family life, Takashi and his bride Midori had four children; a son, Makato, and a daughter, Kayano. Two others died of natural causes a few years before the war. Because of his love for Midori and her family, Nagai realized that something was missing at a deeper level in his life. At the age of 26, he followed his wife’s spiritual path and was baptized a Catholic at the cathedral in Nagasaki. His life became a balance of his passion for science and medicine, the traditional ways of Japan, his newfound faith, and his great, great love for Midori.

On that most horrible August day in 1945, the final blow to Japan’s empire fell like lightning on Nagasaki. Working at the hospital that day, he witnessed total devastation.

In the days after the atomic bomb destroyed practically everything he knew and loved, save his two children and his spirit, Dr. Nagai realized that he too was getting sick from exposure to the radiation. The bitter and violent loss of Midori, his community, and the humiliation of the defeat of his nation, was now joined with his personal suffering. He faced the diagnosis of a terminal cancer and the approach of his own death, fully aware that when he passed, he would leave Makato and Kayano behind as orphans.

His personal suffering was intense. Yet, it also provoked a beautiful response. Some may call it supernatural. He retired with his children to a tiny hut that he called “Nyokodo. There, he spent his remaining days bedridden and dedicated himself to the cause of peace and personal transformation. His path would be one of simplicity and voluntary poverty. Incapacitated and limited in his ability to move about, “a new and prophetic Nagai is born.” In his book, “The Bells of Nagasaki,” Takashi reveals that he experienced a “conversion and transformation…through intense suffering.” He lost everything; his work, his health, and worst of all his sweet Midori.

This young scientist who spent his life’s energy on research and publications now immersed himself in seeking a life of contemplation and peace. This was accompanied by a loving exploration of all that he believed was good about his Japanese culture. He became an artist, a writer and a poet who wrote and published twenty-one books. For the young girls of Junshin School who were killed by the atomic blast while they chanted the psalms, he wrote the following verse:

“Virgins like lilies white

Disappeared burning red

In the flames of the holocaust

Chanting psalms

To the Lord.”

He spent countless hours perfecting his practice of traditional Japanese calligraphy, while lying in the simple bed of his tiny home; his children tending to him, praying with him, and learning from him. He received visitors who were drawn by his quiet, mystical response to great suffering. They came to meet him and ask him for his prayers and friendship. They came from his city, throughout Japan, and even the world. For many, he cast a light on the path forward from the horror of war. When Helen Keller visited him and reached out to touch him, Takashi was overwhelmed to the point of tears. In a striking example of power bowing to authentic humility, the Emperor of Japan paid the good doctor a visit as well.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the Urakami district of Nagasaki was the center of his worship and community. On the day when the Fat Man bomb exploded in the sky above, the cathedral was destroyed. Two priests and dozens of parishioners were killed instantly. Four months later, some young men gathered to lift one of the bells that had fallen from the steeple. With great effort they managed to suspend the bell from a log and make it ring again. It was Christmas Eve of 1945. Moved and inspired by this beautiful sound, Takashi wrote, “The clear sound of those bells! - ringing out the message of peace and its blessings…May there never again be a time when they do not ring!”

“From this atomic waste the people of Nagasaki confront the world and cry out: No more war!” He prayed “that Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.” With the bells still ringing, Takashi prays with his children. “Makato and Kayano make the sign of the cross.”

From his humble home, with his children and his hope sustaining him, Dr. Takashi Nagai succumbed on May 1, 1951. He was only 43 years old. His was a life of suffering. It was also a life of hope in the immediate aftermath of the worst war in human history.