On August 9, 1945 the American Air Force dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. They used as their reference point the most visible building in the part of Nagasaki with munitions factories: St. Mary's Cathedral, usually known as Urakami Cathedral because of its location in the Urakami valley. The Cathedral was one of the largest churches in Asia. The bomb detonated less than two thousand feet from the Cathedral itself, obliterating most of it. There may have been a Mass going on at the time; if so, everyone there was vaporized in an instant. Since the area had the highest concentration of Catholics in Japan, somewhere around ten thousand Catholics died in the next few moments alone.
The current cathedral was rebuilt in the late 1950s.
