I WAS A-BOMBED ; A Jesuit Missionary, survivor of the Hiroshima Bombing will give his address: "I Was A-Bombed"

Stiff broadside measuring 11" x 14", advertising a speaking engagement being held in Fargo, North Dakota on April 1, of 1951 by a then 36-year-old German-born Jesuit priest, Rev. Hubert F. Schiffer recounting his remarkable, and harrowing experience surviving the bombing of Hiroshima by the United States military on the morning of August 6, 1945. Text of broadside as printed: "I WAS A-BOMBED; Rev. Hubert F. Schiffer, S.J., a Jesuit Missionary, survivor of the Hiroshima Bombing will give his address "I Was A-Bombed"; Eight blocks from "Ground Zero", when the bomb exploded, Father Schiffer is qualified to describe an actual Atomic Bombing! Those attending the lecture will be privileged to list the name of a War-Veteran, of any race or creed, in a "Golden Book of Prayer" to be kept at a Memorial Shrine built on the site of the A-Bombs explosion; [To be held on] Sunday, April 1, 1951. Place: Shanley High School Gym. Time: 8:00 p.m. Tickets: $1.00. Available at Lugers Record Department, Daveau Music Co., K.C. Hall, Service Drug, Hurley's Religious Goods Store". A scarce, and most unusual ephemeral artifact produced at the height of the Cold War. Very faint age-toning and a touch of foxing, chiefly confined to the margins, else, very good+. Unrecorded in OCLC. No extant copies available in commerce at time of cataloguing. "Father Schiffer, a thirty-six-year-old German-born Jesuit, joined the Society in 1934 and was sent to Japan in 1935. He was assigned to study Japanese Language, Literature and Religion at the Sophia University. After acting as interpreter of the Chinese bishop, Most Rev. Tchao, S.J., for one year, he began his Theological studies at Shanghai and completed them in Tokyo, and was ordained a priest there. Father Schiffer was sent to Hiroshima as an assistant in a parish church in July of 1945. Two weeks later Hiroshima was completely destroyed by the A-bomb. On the morning of August 6, 1945, Fr. Schiffer had offered Mass and eaten breakfast, and was quietly reading a Japanese newspaper at the breakfast table, when the bomb exploded eight blocks from the church, which was leveled. The adjoining earthquake-proof rectory was severely damaged, but remained one of the few buildings left standing in the city of 400,000. Fr. Schiffer recalled: "The room was suddenly filled with a blinding light. Then Bang!- a terrific concussion hurled me across the room. I was thrown against the opposite wall as though heavy sledge hammers had hit me in the back and head." The next thing he knew, he was lying down, recovering consciousness and was covered with blood that spurted from a cut above his left ear. He could neither see nor hear. This frightened him, for in a bombing such as he had known, there should have been noise. Suddenly he realized he was both deaf and blind. After he had regained his senses, he saw the vast destruction and after many hours of suffering, he was taken to the Jesuit novitiate three miles out of town. There the Rector had to operate on Fr. Schiffer without anaesthesia or proper surgical instruments. So with the aid of scissors and razor blades, Fr. Schiffer had 100 splinters of glass and wood removed from his head and back. To this day he carries radio active splinters in his head. Though the Japanese Government listed the dead at Hiroshima at about 80,000 for publication in the newspapers, Father Schiffer said that it readily admits that the official death list totals some 200,000 of the little more than 500,000 people in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. After the war Father Schiffer was called up to undertake many jobs, among which were teaching at the State University of Hiroshima and at the Teacher’s College. In 1949 he was called to serve on the National Board of Caritas, Japan." [Source: "The Stag: Published by Students of Fairfield University". Vol. II - No. 2. April 12, 1951. Retrieved: December 28, 2021]. …