About 80,000 people died right away in the Hiroshima attack, and up to 130,000 people, mostly civilians, may have died because of it. About 40,000 people were killed right away in the attack on the port city of Nagasaki, and a third of the city was destroyed.
Four Jesuits were near the center of the Hiroshima bombing, but they lived through the disaster and were not hurt by the radiation that killed thousands of people in the months afterward.
Hugo Lassalle, Hubert Schiffer, Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and Hubert Cieslik, who were all Jesuit priests, were at the rectory of the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, which was one of the few buildings that did not get damaged by the bomb.
Father Cieslik wrote in his diary that the broken windows hurt them a little, but that the atomic energy that was released did not hurt them at all.
The doctors who cared for them afterward told them that the radiation they had been exposed to would cause serious lesions, illness, and death at an earlier age.
The diagnosis never materialized. No diseases ever came up, and in 1976, Father Schiffer went to Philadelphia to tell his story at the Eucharistic Congress. He confirmed that the other Jesuits were still alive and healthy. Over the next few years, they were checked by dozens of doctors more than 200 times, but no radiation was found in their bodies.
The four religious people never doubted that God and the Blessed Virgin Mary were keeping them safe. “We were living the message of Fatima and we prayed the Rosary every day,” they said.
Reference:
CNA, and @cnalive. “The Miracle of Hiroshima – Jesuits Survived the Atomic Bomb Thanks to the Rosary | Catholic News Agency.” The Miracle of Hiroshima – Jesuits survived the atomic bomb thanks to the rosary. Accessed October 24, 2022. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/32445/the-miracle-of-hiroshima-%E2%80%93-jesuits-survived-the-atomic-bomb-thanks-to-the-rosary.