Story
When the brick cathedral of was finally finished in 1925, thirty years after building began, its two front towers were fitted with French-made Angelus bells.
On August 9, 1945, the bomb exploded about 500 meters from the cathedral.The north tower collapsed and its smaller bell was shattered. The great bell of the south tower was found in the rubble almost undamaged.
On the afternoon of December 24, 1945, with the parish priest's consent and with Servant of God praying the rosary nearby, young men of the parish dug the bell free, hung it from three logs, and at about the hour of the Angelus rang it over the ruins.Nagai's book The Bells of (1949) made the sound famous across Japan.
The bell was hung in the cathedral rebuilt in 1959, and it is rung for prayer three times a day.For many survivors it was a support through the years of recovery.The broken small bell was kept as it was found.
In 2023 James Nolan Jr of Williams College, talking with Urakami parishioner Moriuchi Kōjirō about the bell, offered to have a matching one made. American Catholics paid for it. Archbishop Peter Nakamura Michiaki blessed it on July 17, 2025, and it was installed that afternoon in the north tower. It is named the "St Kateri of Hope" bell.At 11:02 on August 9, 2025, the moment of the explosion eighty years before, the new bell began to ring and the old one joined it: the first time in eighty years that both towers had sounded together.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Disputed: where the shattered small bell is shown: the city guide says the Pieta liturgy centre in the grounds; the Archdiocese says the parish's atomic-bomb relics room.