Hiroshima Myth

TBC: Devotees of the Virgin Mary have an established group of myths which are periodically circulated in order to support their beliefs:
 
"The power of the Fatima Message was underscored for the whole world during the atomic explosion at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. A German Jesuit and seven of his colleagues were living only eight blocks from the blinding center of the nuclear flash, yet all escaped while flaming death screamed all around them. To this day, all eight occupants of that building are alive and well while others living some distance away continue to die from the radiation effects of that frightful holocaust. Over the years some two hundred scientists have examined these eight survivors, trying to discover what could have spared them from incineration or the lethal storm of radiation. Speaking on TV in the United States, the German Jesuit, Father Hubert Shiffner, gave the startling answer. 'In that house the Rosary was prayed every day. In that house, we were living the Message of Fatima.' His words seemed to underline Sister Lucia's statement in 1977: Our Lady will protect all Her dear ones'." (Nicholas Gruner, additional contributors from Fatima experts, "World Enslavement or Peace: It's Up to the Pope").
 
TBC: To the contrary, the truth does not support their claims. The following are excerpts from an eyewitness report from Jesuit priest John A. Seimes, who was on the outskirts of Hiroshima where he lived in a Jesuit seminary.
 
"Soon comes news that the entire city has been destroyed by the explosion and that it is on fire. What became of Father Superior and the three other Fathers who were at the center of the city at the Central Mission and Parish House?
 
"At about four o'clock in the afternoon, a theology student and two kindergarten children, who lived at the Parish House and adjoining buildings which had burned down, came in and said that Father Superior LaSalle and Father Schiffer had been seriously injured and that they had taken refuge in Asano Park on the river bank. It is obvious that we must bring them in since they are too weak to come here on foot.
 
"At the far corner of the park, on the river bank itself, we at last come upon our colleagues. Father Schiffer is on the ground pale as a ghost. He has a deep incised wound behind the ear and has lost so much blood that we are concerned about his chances for survival. The Father Superior has suffered a deep wound of the lower leg. Father Cieslik and Father Kleinsorge have minor injuries but are completely exhausted.
 
While they are eating the food that we have brought along, they tell us of their experiences. They were in their rooms at the Parish House--it was a quarter after eight, exactly the time when we had heard the explosion in Nagatsuke--when came the intense light and immediately thereafter the sound of breaking windows, walls and furniture. They were showered with glass splinters and fragments of wreckage. Father Schiffer was buried beneath a portion of a wall and suffered a severe head injury. The Father Superior received most of the splinters in his back and lower extremity from which he bled copiously. Everything was thrown about in the rooms themselves, but the wooden framework of the house remained intact. The solidity of the structure which was the work of Brother Gropper again shone forth.
 
From Appendix: Father John Siemes' eyewitness account, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki", by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946. Project Gutenberg