hiroshima 8

After his doctorate... 

Arrupe was sent to work as a missionary in Japan. 

His early years as missionary were very frustrating for him. No matter what he did, what he organised, people did not attend, and few if any converted to Christianity. 

When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in Hawaii, on December 7th 1941, it was 8 December in Japan. Arrupe was celebrating the Eucharist for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when he was arrested and imprisoned for a time, being suspected of espionage. 

On Christmas Eve, Arrupe heard people gathering outside his cell door, and presumed that the time for him to be executed had arrived. However, to his utter surprise, he discovered that some fellow Catholics, ignoring all danger, had come to sing him Christmas carols. 

Upon this realization, Arrupe recalled that he burst into tears. His attitude of profound prayer and his lack of offensive behaviour gained him the respect of his jailers and judges, and he was set free within a month.

Arrupe was appointed Jesuit superior and novice master in Japan in 1942, and was living in suburban Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in August 1945. 

He was one of eight Jesuits who were within the blast zone of the bomb, and all eight survived the destruction, protected by a hillock which separated the novitiate from the center of Hiroshima. Arrupe described that event as 'a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory.' 

Arrupe used his medical skills to help those who were wounded or dying. The Jesuit novitiate was converted into a makeshift hospital, where between 150 and 200 people received care. 

Arrupe recalled, 'the chapel, half destroyed, was overflowing with the wounded, who were lying on the floor very near to one another, suffering terribly, twisted with pain.' 

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