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A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb
by
Paul Glynn
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August 19 - August 27, 2025
“Gentlemen, this is man, the object of our studies. A body with physical properties. Things you can see, weigh, test, measure. And this is all man is.” Nagai found nothing odd in this denial of the spiritual. It would be wrong to say he did not believe in anything. He passionately believed in science, sure that science held the key to every door that barred human progress. That faith spurred him on to study with the dedication his father showed thirty years earlier. Nagai believed also in “humanity”. Science had dispelled the mists of the long Dark Ages, and the human race was at last coming
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My mother in that last penetrating gaze knocked down the ideological framework I had constructed. This woman who had brought me into the world and reared me, this woman who had never once let up in her love for me. . . in the very last moments of her life spoke clearly to me! Her eyes spoke to mine, and with finality, saying: “Your mother now takes leave in death, but her living spirit will be beside her little one, Takashi.” I who was so sure that there was no such thing as a spirit was now told otherwise; and I could not but believe!
Pascal insisted that surer than sense or merely intellectual certainty is certainty experienced in the heart or human spirit. It is not our shallow intellect that can grasp God, continued Pascal; we meet him in our heart, in our spirit—that is where faith is. The Frenchman concluded with some strong advice: If you find anything cogent and attractive in my words, know they come from a man who goes down on his knees.
“Ceaselessly the river flows. . . . The eddying foam gathers and then is gone, never staying for a moment. Even so is man and his habitat.”
Sad am I at heart When the moon’s bright silver disk Disappears below the mountain. . . How peaceful it will be Amida’s perpetual light!
nature deliberately put our navel right where we see it daily as we bathe. It was placed there as a sign, as a symbol that our bodies and every part of us came as gifts. We literally lived from our mother for nine whole months. We did absolutely nothing to deserve this, being passive recipients of her nourishment and care. Therefore, of ourselves we are truly mu, we are nothing, we are the void.
Pascal and Dogen were saying reason can never arrive at the full Truth. Was this the fatal blind spot in religious believers? Was this disastrous apparent rejection of reason behind the fanaticism and wars that seemed to invalidate the claims of every religion Nagai had read about? Yet Pascal and Dogen possessed something magnanimous that mere “reasonable” people seemed to lack.
God is always in charge; difficulties, darkness and suffering become opportunities for new graces if we keep trusting.”
“There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”
Assistance is authentic, he jotted down in his journal, when it helps restore a person’s dignity.
Though the nation go under, the mountains and streams remain. Though men explode atom bombs, God’s sunlight never fails. Scientist Nagai corrected that thought: “The sun’s fuel is already half spent, and one day sunlight will disappear and the green mountains around me will die, just as surely as my wife died and my books and medals turned to ash.”
Maidens like white lilies Consumed in the burning flames As a whole burnt sacrifice And they were singing.
He wrote: “You are small children and have already lost your mother. That is an irreplaceable loss. A father’s death is not anywhere near the loss of a mother. My death will leave you orphans, vulnerable and alone in the world. You will weep. Yes, you might even weep your hearts out, and that will be good—provided you weep before your Father in heaven. We have it on the authority of his Son, and I have experienced the truth of it personally: ‘Happy are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.’ Spill your tears before him, and he will always dry them. That is the Sermon on the Mount, the
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Real prayer does not make terribly difficult demands “like going off to mountains alone and becoming ascetics”. No, we can pray as soon as we can speak with the loving Person who is the source of all dynamism in the universe.
Suffering, gracefully accepted, refines the human heart, and the experience of darkness sharpens the vision of the spirit. After meeting Keller and Miyagi, he wrote: “Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don’t understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven’t cried, you can’t dry another’s eyes. Unless you’ve walked in darkness, you can’t help wanderers find the way. Unless you’ve looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can’t help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive.”
“God has never said you have to perform great deeds for your country and humanity to have lived well. Where would that leave all the sick people in the world? Look at me, for instance, needing to be assisted all the time. You wouldn’t say that we sick and bedridden of the world are ‘useful’! But usefulness is not the point. Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in and go on living lovingly. A sick person who has grasped this will live so full a life that there will be no room for morbid death wishes.
Why are some people afflicted with low IQs, handicapped bodies, weak physiques, material poverty? I don’t know, but I can assure you of this: if all of us accepts ourselves as we are, it is absolutely certain that a day will come when we can see how God’s plans have been accomplished, and precisely through our weakness. . . .
“I think you, through your narrow interpretation, offend against the Bible’s teaching about images. You worship the images of your own mind, man-made and very prone to become idols. All the more subtle for appearing spiritual!”
1. From a glorious blue sky Sorrow came that rent my heart. This life of ours is as unstable as the waves, As impermanent as wild flowers in the field! CHORUS Ah yes, but they still ring out, Comforting and encouraging, The Bells of Nagasaki. 2. She died alone, my wife, called to heaven before me, Leaving me as keepsake her Rosary. Now it glistens with my tears. CHORUS 3. That funeral Mass! Under a sky that wept in mourning, A moaning wind for our hymns. I clutched the cross fashioned for her grave. The sparkling sea was gray with grief. CHORUS 4. There I bared
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FIRE God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers or scholars. Certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ, God of Jesus Christ. Deum meum et Deum vestrum.2 The world is forgotten and everything except God. Greatness of the human soul. O, righteous Father, the world has not known Thee, but I have known Thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
Our society has sought to solve the problem of suffering by removing pain. That is a negative solution that can never be the whole solution.
