Oppenheimer and the untold story of the destruction of the Japanese Church

When American aviators used the cathedral in Nagasaki to guide the dropping of the atomic bomb that ended the second world war, they wiped out a Christian community that had survived hundreds of years of persecution. This is the untold story of Oppenheimer,  says Professor Nick Megoran

The story of the design, testing and use of atomic weapons is the theme of Christopher Nolan’s highly acclaimed summer film, Oppenheimer. J Robert Oppenheimer’s first atomic bomb was detonated at a New Mexico test site on July 16 1945. Codenamed ‘Trinity’, was the nickname blasphemous, or a stroke of theological genius?

Perhaps surprisingly, some Christians welcomed the dawn of the atomic age. In 1946 Catholic priest, scientist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote an essay about what he called “the spiritual repercussions of the atom bomb.” He said that a new humanity was born after “that famous sunrise” when Oppenheimer’s team successfully tested the first bomb. Its destructive power “must render all armed conflict impossible,” he reasoned, adding that the scientific challenge of taming atomic energy would inevitably draw humanity “together in an atmosphere of sympathy.”