Toshiko Sasaki had a busy day in front of her. As the eldest daughter, she always helped her mother get the family ready every morning before going to work herself. But this time, her baby sister had taken ill during the night, and her mother was with the baby at a hospital in the city. On her own, she made food for her father and two younger siblings before commuting to the city and beginning her day’s work as office clerk at the East Asia Tin Works. She opened her record books and turned her head to say something to a coworker. But she never had the chance. It was 8:15 AM on the morning of August 6, 1945 at Toshiko’s office in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Seldom in all of history has a single moment in time been so decisive and destructive for so many people in one place. Tens of thousands died instantly (including Toshika’s parents and infant sister). Many more would die in the coming days, weeks, and months of the hideous effects of radiation poisoning. For those who survived, their lives would never be the same.
In a remarkable two-part book Hiroshima by American journalist John Hersey, six of the survivors of the world's first nuclear bombing tell their personal stories of endurance. They are difficult stories of people often permanently injured and afflicted with recurring strange illnesses. But the story of Toshika Sasaki stands out as a witness of grace and redemption, thanks to her encounter with another of Hersey’s six survivors, the Jesuit missionary Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge.
First, however, Toshika would endure many months of gruesome suffering, medical neglect, and near despair in the chaos of the obliterated city. The infamous “blinding flash of light” at 8:15 on August 6 was followed immediately by the unimaginable explosive devastation of the city. As her office building collapsed, Toshika was buried within the wreckage under shelves of books with the terrible pain of a compound fracture in her left leg. Nearly left for dead, she was eventually found and removed, only to be placed in the street with countless others who were horribly injured, waiting as improvisational medical stations were desperately thrown together with abysmally inadequate equipment. Eventually Toshika would be moved five times while she endured a broken and severely infected leg, some signs of radiation sickness, and dangerously high fever. When treatment finally began, the bones had fused, and the twenty-year-old girl appeared permanently disabled.
In February 1946, a mutual friend asked Father Kleinsorge to visit Toshika. The Jesuit priest — along with his confreres at the nearby mission church — was spending all his strength visiting the sick (when he wasn't himself hospitalized). Toshika, however, was not comforted by his words. She cried out, “How can a good God allow such a horror as this?” Kleinsorge tried to explain to her that sin — human rejection of God’s goodness — led to the evils of violence.
After her infection healed, Toshika returned to her home in a suburb, outside the blast range, where her brother and sister had remained unharmed. Father Kleinsorge, weakened by his own illnesses, continued to visit her, walking now from a great distance. She wasn't yet convinced by the things he said, but she was touched by his consistent concern for her whole person. Then one spring morning, she saw the sun beautifully glistening on the dew, and her soul was filled with an incredible joy and peace. She spontaneously prayed the “Our Father.” Suddenly, it all “fit together” and she desired to follow the religion of her Jesuit friend.
Toshiko was baptized in September 1946. A few years later she joined a religious congregation as Sister Dominique Sasaki, and served with great compassion the poor and sick for the rest of her life.
