By Katarzyna Szalajko
OSV News
WARSAW, Poland — Eighty years ago, two of the world’s deadliest weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, bringing near-total destruction.
But a Catholic monastery built in Nagasaki by a future martyr and saint survived and to this day brings a Franciscan message of peace to a place that could easily plunge into hatred and despair.
The Aug. 6, 1945, explosion in the first Japanese city, Hiroshima, instantly killed around 80,000. The number of victims doubled in the following days and months due to injuries and radiation-related diseases. On Aug. 9, 1945, the city of Nagasaki was the next one to be devastated by an atomic bomb.
An estimated 40,000 to 75,000 people were killed instantly by the blast, heat and radiation from the bomb. Thousands died following the blast after the drop of the “Fat Man,” the name of the bomb that followed Hiroshima’s destroyer, “Little Boy.”
The blast wiped out approximately 8,500 of the 12,000 parishioners at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Nagasaki — Japan’s most Catholic city.
Yet, on a hillside in the Hongouchi district, one building remained standing: a Franciscan friary established by Polish Franciscan Father Maximilian Kolbe.
In 1930, Father Kolbe, already well known for founding the international Militia Immaculata, or MI movement, in Italy and for founding Niepokalanow — the largest friary and Catholic media center in Poland with its several MI magazines, first Polish Catholic daily newspaper and first Catholic radio station — felt called to expand his mission eastward. He arrived in Japan with little more than his Franciscan habit and a dream to spread Marian devotion.
“Kolbe came to Japan in 1930 with almost nothing, not even knowing the language,” American consecrated virgin Annamaria Mix, who works at the Militia Immaculata Archive in Niepokalanow and is a Knight of the Immaculate herself, told OSV News.
“But his determination was incredible. When the bishop of Nagasaki allowed him to stay on the condition that he would teach in the seminary, Kolbe accepted without hesitation.”
The location of the friary was chosen not for convenience but for conviction. “Why build on a steep, difficult hill? Because it was cheap,” explained Mix, who is originally from Waterbury, Connecticut.
The friary, named “Mugensai no Sono” (“The Garden of the Immaculate”), became the headquarters for Father Kolbe’s missionary work in East Asia.
While surveying the hillside in Hongouchi, Father Kolbe discovered a natural spring and envisioned transforming the spot into a replica of the Lourdes grotto of the French shrine. The grotto remains intact to this day — a quiet place of prayer and Marian devotion, echoing the priest’s lifelong mission.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Father Kolbe — who at the time and due to deteriorating health had to go back to his native Poland for three years — continued to support his Japanese brothers.
For the future saint, the Japanese mission was more than a chapter in his apostolic journey — it carried a spiritual bond. In a letter dated Sept. 10, 1940, written from Niepokalanow, Father Kolbe expressed joy at the resilience of the Japanese mission despite the challenges of wartime communication.
He encouraged the Japanese friars to remain faithful to their mission despite wartime hardships, placing all in the hands of Mary: “May the Immaculata bless you always and everywhere in all things,” he said in his 1940 letter, emphasizing that the true renewal of the world begins in every heart through spiritual means.
While much of Nagasaki was obliterated, Mugensai no Sono — now called Seibo no Kishi — remained intact due to its location behind a mountain ridge that shielded it from the blast’s direct impact.
Today, the friary continues to function, housing friars, publishing the Japanese version of the “Knight of the Immaculata” magazine and welcoming pilgrims. A small museum commemorates St. Kolbe’s work in Japan.
St. Kolbe was captured by the German occupiers of Poland on Feb. 17, 1941, and transferred to Auschwitz on May 28 that same year. He offered to be locked in a death hunger cell to take the place of a man who had a family. The priest died on Aug. 14, 1941.
St. John Paul II canonized St. Kolbe on Oct. 10, 1982.