Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

Father Johannes Siemes, a German Jesuit priest and a professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo’s Catholic University, had been evacuated from the capital to the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagatsuke, a suburb of Hiroshima. He was sitting in his spartan bedroom, about a mile from the epicenter, when the room was suddenly filled with a “garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat.”11 Moments later came a great tearing sound, a sudden collapse of ceilings and walls, and a sensation of falling or sliding into an abyss. Dr. Hachiya’s house was filled with swirling dust. He could see only a wooden pillar, leaning askew, and then noted that the roof was caving in. He had been wearing underwear, but a moment after the flash he was completely naked, though he had not noticed the garments being ripped away. Like many others, the doctor first assumed that a conventional bomb had fallen directly on his house. He shouted to his wife, “It’s a 500-ton bomb!”