Mobilization out of Hiroshima 60 years ago to work in a weapons-manufacturing zone probably saved the life of Hayazoe Jo, then a 19-year-old student.

Sixty years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city Aug. 6, 1945, Father Hayazoe, now 79 and a Hiroshima diocesan priest, recalled the horror and the events that led to his conversion to Catholicism and, eventually, his priesthood.

"The explosion took place at 8:15, just when the tram I usually rode was crossing the bridge right below the blast," Father Hayazoe said, referring to his daily journey to school in Hiroshima.

Had he not been sent to Otake, a weapons- and munitions-producing center about 18 miles down the coast, he added, "I would have been among the blackened corpses."

An estimated 80,000 people out of a population of 250,000 were killed outright by the explosion. By the end of 1945, an additional 60,000 people were reported to have died from radiation poisoning.

On Aug. 9, 1945, another nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, claiming more than 70,000 lives.

From Otake, Father Hayazoe saw the "mushroom cloud" that spread over Hiroshima the day before he was told to return to his school to help identify bodies.

"The smell of burning bodies, the smell of rotting bodies, I couldn't stand it," he recalled. "Tears poured from my eyes…. There were screaming mothers all over the place."

The Japanese government surrendered to the Allied Forces Aug. 15, 1945. With the end of the war, said Father Hayazoe, "the struggle for a new life began."

His younger brother, who had been a student at the naval academy, also returned to Hiroshima. A sense of hopelessness afflicted them both.

Then one day, his brother came home with "an uncannily quiet expression on his face," the priest said.

"He told me that he was in Nagatsuka," near Hiroshima, "and talked with a Spanish priest there for about 30 minutes." Father Hayazoe thought, "If anyone can change my ultranationalist brother in only 30 minutes, I want to meet that man, too."

The priest was Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe, who later became superior general of the Jesuits. He had opened the Jesuit residence to victims of the bombing and, along with other priests, was attempting to provide medical care.

Father Arrupe, who served in Japan from 1939 to 1965, converted his novitiate into a hospital and, because of his earlier training as a medical student, was able to treat the injured. The shock of the bombing helped convince him of the need for a "pedagogy of love."

"When I met him, I was surprised to see that there were such people in the world," Father Hayazoe said. But his surprise became a decision: "Okay, I'll try to become like that."

Father Hayazoe was baptized in 1947. Fourteen years later, on March 21, 1961, he was ordained a priest at World Peace Memorial Cathedral, built to replace the damaged cathedral in Hiroshima and in remembrance of the nuclear attack.

Today, Father Hayazoe works in Hiroshima Diocese looking after young victims of domestic violence. Reflecting on the inhumanity people all too often have shown, he commented, "If there are intelligent beings on other planets, they will say about us, 'They are strongly addicted to evil.'"

---CNS