Nagasaki church replaces cathedral bell 80 years after it was destroyed in atomic blast

CNA Staff, Jul 26, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Catholics in Nagasaki, Japan, have replaced a bell in a cathedral bell tower there almost exactly 80 years to the day after it was destroyed by the atomic blast that leveled most of the city at the end of World War II.

An international effort to fund the construction and installation of the bell at Urakami Cathedral raised $125,000 in just over a year, with the funds coming from over 600 individual donors, according to Williams College Professor James Nolan.

Nagasaki was one of the two Japanese cities, along with Hiroshima, largely destroyed by the U.S. atomic bombings at the close of World War II. The city was bombed on Aug. 9, 1945, marking the second and last time an atomic bomb was used as an act of war.

Nolan told CNA last year that parishioners at Urakami Cathedral managed to dig up one of the original bells after the bombing and save it; the bell was installed in the cathedral’s right bell tower after it was rebuilt in 1959.

The remaining bell, however, was destroyed, with the second rebuilt tower remaining empty for decades.

Nolan — a sociology professor who came to Nagasaki frequently while writing and researching a book about the local Catholic population’s response to the bombing — said a parishioner at the cathedral, Kojiro Moriuchi, remarked to him at one point that it would be “wonderful if American Catholics gave us the bell for the left tower,” leading the professor to help spearhead the effort to replace the instrument. 

For the professor, his own involvement in the project is personal. His grandfather served as the chief medical officer at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, facility where the atomic bomb was developed and later came with a survey team to both Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the bombs fell.

People “were keen to give, once they learned the story about Nagasaki,” Nolan told CNA this week.

“We reached our goal of $125,000 on July 15,” he said. The funds will pay off the cost of making the bell as well as transporting and installing it, he said. 

“It took about one year and four months to raise the funds. In the final tally there were a total of 628 individual donations,” Nolan said. 

Moriuchi spoke at the blessing ceremony on July 17 and “got a bit choked up,” Nolan said. 

Nagasaki Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura blessed the bell on that date and named it the “St. Kateri Bell of Hope,” according to the Associated Press.

The bell will be officially installed on Aug. 9, eight decades after the parish was leveled by the atomic bomb. Nolan said it will be rung at 11:02 a.m., the exact moment in 1945 when the bomb detonated around 1,600 feet west of the church. 

At the bombing location, a section of wall from the old, destroyed cathedral sits in Nagasaki Peace Park. At the rebuilt parish to the east, meanwhile, Nolan said he hopes the bell “will bear the fruit of fostering hope and peace and solidarity between American and Japanese Catholics.” 

In remarks delivered at the blessing ceremony this month, Nolan said American Catholics learning of the destruction wrought at Nagasaki “expressed sorrow, regret, sadness, and a wish for forgiveness and reconciliation.”

One person, he said, wrote to him: “May the ringing of these bells continue to remind the people of Nagasaki of our sorrow for what their people have endured and reassure them of ours and God’s love for them.”

Another said the bell’s donation was meant “to heal the wounds of this war and progress to world peace.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265563/nagasaki-church-replaces-cathedral-bell-80-years-after-it-was-destroyed-in-atomic-blast