Arrupe Surviving The Atomic Bomb PDF

# His Own Life ## 1 I have the impression that my life is written in a single sentence: "It has unfolded according to the will of God." -Pedro Arrupe ## Surviving the Atomic Bomb On the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. Pedro Arrupe saw...

# His Own Life ## 1 I have the impression that my life is written in a single sentence: "It has unfolded according to the will of God." -Pedro Arrupe ## Surviving the Atomic Bomb On the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. Pedro Arrupe saw the blinding flash of light. Moments later he heard its roar and felt its seismic power throw him across the room and to the floor, showering him in bits of broken glass and falling plaster. He was thirty-seven, the master of novices and superior of a community of thirty-five men located in the town of Nagatsuka on the outskirts of Hiroshima. In 1950 Arrupe traveled around the world and spoke about his recollections of that experience. This selection, which dates from that year, was first published as part of a longer memoir in 1965. The companion piece located at the end of chapter 4 was written in 1970, twenty-five years after the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima. ## His Own Life On the morning of August 6 something happened to break the monotony of the previous months. At about 7:55 in the morning a B-29 appeared. The air-raid alarm did not cause us any undue worry since we had grown accustomed to seeing squadrons of a hundred planes flying over our heads. There seemed to be no reason to be concerned. Ten minutes after the alarm began to sound we were sure the enemy had left the city. We then resumed our usual activities in peace. I was in my room with another priest at 8:15 when suddenly we saw a blinding light, like a flash of magnesium. Naturally we were surprised and jumped up to see what was happening. As I opened the door which faced the city, we heard a formidable explosion similar to the blast of a hurricane. At the same time doors, windows, and walls fell upon us in smithereens. We threw ourselves or were thrown to the floor. I say we were thrown because a German priest, who weighed over two hundred pounds and had been resting against the window sill of his room, found himself sitting in the hall several yards away with a book in his hand. The shower of roof tiles, bricks, and glass rained upon us. Three or four seconds seemed an eternity because when one fears that a beam is about to crash down and flatten one's skull, time is incredibly prolonged. When we were able to stand, we went running through the house. I had the responsibility for thirty-five young men who were under my direction. I found none of them had even a scratch. We went out into the garden to see where the bomb had fallen since none of us doubted that that is what had happened. But when we got there, we looked at one another in surprise: there was no hole in the ground, nor any sign of an explosion. The trees and flowers all seemed quite normal. We searched the rice fields surrounding our house, looking for the site of the blast, but to no avail. After about fifteen minutes, we noticed that in the direction of the city dense smoke arose. Soon we could see enormous flames. We climbed a hill to get a better view. From there we could see a ruined city: before us was a decimated Hiroshima. Since the houses were made of wood, paper, and straw, and it was at a time when the first meal of the day was being prepared in all the kitchens, the flames contacting the electric current turned the entire city into one enormous lake of fire within two and one half hours.... I shall never forget my first sight of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, eighteen or twenty years old, clinging to one another as they dragged themselves along the road. One had a blister that almost covered her chest; she had burns across half of her face, and a cut in her scalp caused probably by a falling tile, while great quantities of blood coursed freely down her face. On and on they came, a steady procession numbering some 150,000. This gives some idea of the scene of horror that was Hiroshima. We continued looking for some way of entering the city, but it was impossible. We did the only thing that could be done in the presence of such mass slaughter: we fell on our knees and prayed for guidance, as we were destitute of all human help. I had studied medicine many years earlier, and I ran back to the house to find medical supplies. I found the medicine chest under some ruins with the door off its hinges. I retrieved some iodine, aspirins, and bicarbonate of soda. Those were the only supplies at a time when 200,000 victims needed help. What could I do? Where to begin? Again I fell on my knees and implored God's help. It was then that he helped me in a very special way, not with medications but with a simple and essential idea. We quickly decided to clean the house as best we could and tried to accommodate as many of the sick and wounded as we could possibly fit inside. We were able to take only 150. The first thing that had to be done was to gather up extra food to provide those patients with sufficient energy to react against hemorrhages, fever, and infection caused by burns. Our young people, on foot or on bicycles, rushed about the outskirts of Hiroshima. Without thinking how or from where, they came dashing back with more fish, meat, eggs, and butter than we had seen in four years. With these we were able to care for our patients. Some success crowned our efforts because, almost without realizing it, we were attacking from the outset the anemia and leukemia that would develop in the majority of the wounded who had been exposed to atomic radiation. We can rejoice that none of those hospitalized in our house died, except one child who suffered an attack of meningitis as a result of the accumulation of fluid on the brain and died the following day. All the rest survived. While the young people were busy gathering food, I was trying to prepare the patients in a more scientific manner to react favorably. First of all, it was necessary to clean the three kinds of wounds we saw: 1. There were contusions caused by the collapse of buildings. These included fractures and cuts produced by jagged pieces of tile from falling roofs. Dirt and sawdust were encrusted in torn muscles and wounds. Those raw wounds had to be cleansed without anesthetic as we had neither chloroform nor ether nor morphine to assuage the terrible pain. 2. Other wounds were produced by fragments of wood or glass imbedded in the body without tearing the muscles. 3. The third group included all kinds of burns, some very serious. When asked how they were burned, the answer was often the same: they had been trapped under a collapsed smoldering building and as they tried to extricate themselves from under it, they were burned in the process. But there was another kind of burn whose cause no one could explain. I asked one victim: "How were you burnt?" I recall his answer, "I wasn't burnt, Father." "Then, what happened to you?" "I don't know. I saw a flash of light followed by a terrible explosion but nothing happened to me. Then, in a half hour I saw small, superficial blisters forming on my skin, and in four to five hours, there were large burnt areas on the skin which soon became infected. But there was no fire." It was disconcerting. Today we know that it was the effects of infrared radiation which attacks the tissues and produces not only the destruction of the epidermis and the endodermis, but also of muscular tissue. The infections that followed resulted in the death of many and confused those treating the victims. To cleanse the wounds it was necessary to puncture and open the blisters. We had in the house 150 people of whom one-third or one-half had open wounds. The work was painful because when one pierced a small blister, a tiny drop of water spilled out; but when one had to lance a blister that extended over half of a person's body, the discharge measured 150 cc [over half a cup]. At first we used nickel-plated pails, but after the third patient, seeing all there was ahead of us, we began to use all the kettles and basins we could find in the house. The suffering was frightful, the pain excruciating, and it made bodies writhe like snakes, yet there was not a word of complaint. They all suffered in silence. In this respect the Japanese manifest a certain superiority over occidentals: their self-control and stoicism are all the more admirable in the face of overwhelming provocation. After twelve hours we were able to enter the city. As usually happens after great fires, an enormous amount of water vapor condenses and descends in torrential showers. In this way, at least, the burning embers were extinguished. It was five in the afternoon. An indescribable spectacle met our gaze: a macabre vision which staggered the imagination. Before us lay a city completely destroyed. Through its streets we walked, stepping on ruins under which embers still felt warm. Any carelessness on our part could be fatal. Much more terrible, however, was the tragic sight of those thousands of injured people begging for help. One such was a child who had a piece of glass imbedded in the pupil of his left eye, and another who had a large wooden splinter protruding like a dagger from between his ribs. Sobbing, he called out: "Father, save me!" Another victim was caught between two beams with his legs calcified up to the knees. Moving along, we saw a young man running toward us half-crazed and calling for help. For twenty minutes he had been hearing his mother's voice as she lay buried under the rubble of what had been their home. The flames were already enveloping her body, and his efforts to lift the large wooden beams that held her captive had been in vain. More heartbreaking, perhaps, were the cries of the children calling to their parents. Some two hundred children had perished in one school when the roof had collapsed on them. At about ten o'clock in the evening we were able, at last, to locate the residence of our Fathers. All five were injured. Father Schiffer was in critical condition. He had suffered a head wound, which - in an effort to stop the bleeding and having nothing better at hand - they had wrapped in newspapers and a shirt somewhat like a turban. But they had overlooked another wound in the outer ear: a piece of glass had penetrated a small artery and he was slowly bleeding to death. Using some wooden and bamboo planks, we improvised a stretcher on which we might carry him to Nagatsuka. Groaning in pain, but still smiling in true Japanese fashion, he said to me: "Father Arrupe, would you look at my back? I think there's something there." We turned him face down and, by the light of the torch, saw that his back was completely covered with wounds made by small pieces of glass. With a razor blade I removed more than fifty fragments. After his operation, we moved slowly across the city, in the dark, toward our novitiate. Every hundred yards we had to stop so that both we and he might rest. During one of these pauses, we heard painful cries like those of someone near death. We could not find their source but someone, listening carefully, said: "It's underneath here somewhere." Sure enough, we had stepped on the ruins of a roof. Pushing some tiles to one side, we found an old lady half of whose body was burnt. She had been buried there all day and had barely a spark of life left. We removed her from under the rubble just as she was breathing her last. We were to witness more horrible scenes that night. As we approached the river, the spectacle was awful beyond words. Fleeing the flames and availing themselves of low tide, the people lay across both shores, but in the middle of the night the tide began to rise, and the wounded, exhausted now and half buried in mud, could not move. The cries of those drowning are something I shall never forget. At five in the morning, we finally arrived at our destination and began our first treatments on the Fathers. In spite of the urgency of our work, we had first stopped to celebrate our masses. Assuredly, it was in such moments of tragedy that we felt God most near to us. It is at such moments one feels in need of supernatural assistance. The external surroundings in which the Holy Sacrifice was being offered were not such as might promote sensible devotion. In turning around to say "Dominus Vobiscum," I saw before my eyes many wounded, suffering terribly. While reading the Epistle and the Gospel, I had to be careful not to touch with my feet the children that lay so close to me. They wanted to see closely this stranger who was wearing such odd clothing and performing those ceremonies they had never seen before. In spite of it all, I do not think I have ever said mass with such devotion. After mass, when we began to think what more we could do, since natural healing with the help of a good diet was not enough, the Lord came to our aid once again. At eight in the morning, one of our employees came to me with a sack in his hand, and said: "Father, I wanted to help these poor people, too, and, looking here and there to see what I might find, I came upon this sack filled with little bottles that look like medicine. See if they are any good." The contents were over thirty pounds of boric acid. There lay the solution to our problem. Using our underwear and sheets we made many bandages and began our work which, though primitive, gave us fine results. We would place bandages on the wounds, keeping them moist all day with an antiseptic solution of boric acid. In this way, the pain was somewhat relieved and the lesion was kept relatively clean and in contact with the air. The discharge from the wounds would adhere to the dressing, and by changing it four or five times a day we were able to assure asepsis. Continuing this curative process, we could see, in less than a week, the gradual formation of granulations of scar tissue which brought, slowly but surely, a total cure to all. We had no cases of malignant degeneration of the scars.... Much could be written of individual cases that we encountered in that holocaust. We shall briefly describe a few. I was in Nagatsuka treating some wounded when a young couple came to me. The woman was very well since she had been out of the city at the moment of the explosion. Her husband, a young man of twenty-two, was in a lamentable state. He could hardly move. Assisted by his wife who was dragging him along, he came into the house. A trail of pus followed his entrance. Half of his body was one big wound. It was the most serious case I had yet seen, and I thought to myself that the poor man had come to die in our midst. But he, when he realized I was hesitating, took hold of my hand and said in anguish: "Father, help me!" And his wife, taking my other hand, explained: "Father, we're married just one month. Save my husband!" I didn't know what to say. At a moment like that a thousand thoughts pass through one's mind all at once. Finally, I answered, almost meditatively: "Very well, let's see what we can do, but it's going to hurt a lot." Fixing his eyes on me, he said: "Hurt me all you want, I can bear it." Accordingly, we put him on the operating table, which was my office desk, and began to clean the wounds. The poor man, how he twisted and turned! It had to be done in cold blood because the pus had hardened underneath the burns, yet, in the midst of his pain, he kept repeating: "Father, don't hesitate to hurt me; I can take it, but just save me." Someone whispered in my ear: "Would it be possible to cause him less anguish?" But this was impossible. I had to become like an executioner to this man if I was to save his life. And this I was for two and a half hours. At the end he was prostrate with suffering and I, exhausted with the tension I felt while crucifying him with so much pain. In Japan, since the walls are so thin, one can hear every word spoken on the other side; but the young man, forgetting this, as soon as we were out of sight, let go with a volley of verbal abuse against his poor wife using every epithet in the dictionary, thus venting the accumulated anger caused by those hours of torment. She remained passive. As a good Japanese woman, she listened to him smilingly, lighting his cigarette, wiping away perspiration, and giving him something cool to drink. And there she remained by his side day and night. We could never find out when she slept. After eight months this couple left our house. On an April morning, I saw them walking down the hill by the garden, smiling, happy, and baptized. I felt a deep joy at that moment which fully compensated for all the pain of the past eight months. If we had not treated that young man he most certainly would have died. Among all the cases we treated, perhaps those that caused us the most suffering were the children. Everyone knows that in Japan children are adored. They take extreme care with their education to such a degree that there is no illiteracy in Japan: all go to primary and secondary schools; all know how to read and write. At the time of the atomic bomb most of the children were in their respective schools. For that reason, during the explosion thousands of children were separated from their parents; many were wounded and cast into the streets without being able to fend for themselves. We brought all we could to Nagatsuka and began treating them immediately so as to prevent infection and fever. We had absolutely no anesthetics, and some of the children were horribly wounded. One had a cut from ear to ear as a result of a beam that fell on his head. The edge of the wound was over half an inch wide; the injured region of the scalp was filled with clay and pieces of glass. The screams of the poor child during his treatment so upset the entire house that we had no choice but to tie him into a cart with sheets and take him to the top of a hillock near the house. That spot was converted into an amphitheater where we could work, and the child could scream all he wanted without making everyone else a nervous wreck. Our hearts were torn apart during these treatments, but greater was the consolation at being able to restore the children to their parents. Through the Japanese police, who were well organized, we were able to contact all the families whose children we had in the house. Memorable are those scenes of reunion with children that were thought dead in the explosion, and now were found alive and well, or at least in the process of healing. Those mothers and fathers, overcome with joy, did not know how to express their gratitude, and throwing themselves at our feet, reminded us of the Acts of the Apostles when pagans, falling on their knees, adored the disciples of Christ as gods. Apart from all these understandable events, there was one that disconcerted us greatly. Many who were in the city at the moment of the explosion and had suffered no apparent injuries whatsoever, but who, nevertheless, after a few days felt weak and came to us saying they felt a terrible interior heat, that perhaps they had inhaled a poisonous gas, and in a short time they were dead. The first case occurred for me when I was treating an elderly man for two deep wounds on his back. A man came to me and said: "Please, Father, come to my house because my son tells me he has a very bad sore throat." Since the man I was treating was gravely ill, I answered: "It's probably a cold. Give him some aspirin and make him perspire; you'll see he'll get well." Within two hours the boy died. Later a girl of thirteen came weeping and said: "Father, look what's happening to me." And opening her mouth, she showed me bleeding gums, small sores on the lining of the mouth and an acute pharyngitis. She showed me too how her hair was falling out in her hands in bunches. In two days she was dead.... Of the dead, fifty thousand died the moment of the explosion itself, another two hundred thousand during the following weeks, and others much later as a result of wounds or radiation. Until the day after the explosion, we did not know that we were dealing with the first atomic bomb to explode in our world. At first, without electricity or radio, we were cut off from the rest of the world. The following day cars and trains began arriving from Tokyo and Osaka with help for Hiroshima. They stayed in the outskirts of the city, and when we questioned them as to what had happened, they answered very mysteriously: "The first atomic bomb has exploded." "But what is the atomic bomb?" They would answer: "The atom bomb is a terrible thing." "We have seen how terrible it is; but what is it?" And they would repeat: "It's the atomic bomb... the atomic bomb." They knew nothing but the name. It was a new word that was coming for the first time into the vocabulary. Besides, the knowledge that it was the atomic bomb that had exploded was no help to us at all from a medical standpoint, as no one in the world knew its full effects on the human organism. We were, in effect, the first guinea pigs in such experimentation. But from a missionary standpoint, they did challenge us when they said: "Do not enter the city because there is a gas in the air that kills for seventy years." It is at such times that one feels most a priest, when one knows that in the city there are 50,000 bodies which, unless they are cremated, will cause a terrible plague. There were besides some 120,000 wounded to care for. In light of these facts, a priest cannot remain outside the city just to preserve his life. Of course, when one is told that in the city there is a gas that kills, one must be very determined to ignore that fact and go in. And we did. And we soon began to raise pyramids of bodies and pour fuel on them to set them afire. "Surviving the Atomic Bomb" in RR 22-39 ## Recognizing the “Hand of the Lord” at Eucharist One cannot comment on the faith of Father Arrupe without reference to the Eucharist. It was the center of his life of prayer, which he called "the most important act of the entire daily routine." Arrupe frequently wrote about the importance of the Eucharist for St. Ignatius, for the work of the Society of Jesus, and for the ongoing life and mission of the church. In the selections that follow, he speaks about the importance of the Eucharist in his own life and the implications of a genuine eucharistic faith and piety for all Christians today. The first four selections presented here are taken from his talk to the Youth Eucharistic Movement, a gathering of some fourteen hundred high school boys, which met in Assisi on September 6, 1979. The fifth, Eucharist and Hunger, is the opening section of his address to the Worldwide Eucharistic Congress that met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1976. The sixth selection, The ==End of OCR==