"Nagasaki was a traditional center of Japanese Catholicism (and martyrdom) and had been for centuries when it was struck by the second atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. The city was not the prime target that day. But cloud cover over the city of Kokura shifted the targeting such that “Fat Man,” a plutonium-based implosion-type nuclear weapon, was dropped by the B-29 Bockscar and detonated near Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral. The cathedral—the largest Catholic church in East Asia at the time—was filled with worshippers going to confession to prepare for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15. Some 8,500 of Nagasaki’s 12,000 Catholics died that day or shortly thereafter."
"Somehow, one of the two cathedral bells survived the blast, and when a new Urakami Cathedral was built in 1959, the surviving bell was installed in one of the church’s two new towers. Thanks to the Nagasaki Bell Project, a second bell, modeled after the original, will be installed before the eightieth anniversary of the bombing: a gift from America to Japan, and from Catholics to Catholics."