Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [123]
I enjoyed my weekly or monthly meetings with Father Zabelka, and I would even attend services he would conduct at churches in Genesee County. He became my de facto pastor.
But now he wanted to tell me something. I had only known him at this point a few short months, and so the talk of “blood on my hands” was a bit shocking, and I was instantly uncomfortable.
He pulled out an old photograph and pointed to it. In the center of the photo was a plane, and in front of the plane was a group of airmen. And in the middle of the airmen was a chaplain, a priest.
“That’s me,” he said, pointing at the much younger version of himself. “That’s me.”
He looked at me as if I were supposed to know something, or say something. I looked at him, confused and trying to understand what it was I was supposed to understand. It then struck me that he, like my dad, carried with him all the scars of that war. Just from being there, this good priest must have still felt that he was part of a lot of the death and dying. I understood.
“So you were in World War II,” I said sympathetically. “So was my dad. So much death and destruction. It must have been horrible to witness it. Where were you stationed?”
He continued to look at me as if I weren’t getting it.
“What does it say on the plane?” he asked.
I looked closely to see what the writing on the nose of the plane said.
Oh.
“Enola Gay.”
“Right,” Father Zabelka said. “I was the chaplain for the 509th on Tinian Island. I was their priest.”
And then he added: “On August 6, 1945, I blessed the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima.”
I took a deep breath, staring at the photo, then looking away, and then looking at him. His dark eyes seemed even darker now.
“I was the chaplain of the Enola Gay. I said Mass for them on August 5, 1945, and the next morning I blessed them as they left for their mission to slaughter two hundred thousand people. With my blessing. With the blessing of Jesus Christ and the Church. I did that.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He continued:
“And three days later, I blessed the crew and the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Nagasaki was a Catholic city, the only majority Christian city in Japan. The pilot of the plane was a Catholic. And we obliterated the lives of forty thousand fellow Catholics, seventy-three thousand people in all.”
There was now a mist in his eyes as he told me of this horror.
“There were three orders of nuns in Japan, all based in Nagasaki. Every last single one of them was vaporized. Not a single nun from any of the three orders was alive. And I blessed that.”
I didn’t know what to say. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder.
“George, you didn’t drop the bomb. You didn’t plan the destruction of these cities. You were there to do your job, to minister to the needs of these young men.”
“No,” he insisted, “it’s not that easy. I was part of it. I said nothing. I wanted us to win. I was part of the effort. Everyone had a role to play. My role was to condone it in the name of Christ.”
He explained that far from being repulsed when he heard the news about Hiroshima later that day, he felt what most Americans felt—relief. That maybe this would end the war.
“I didn’t quit over this,” he said emphatically. “I remained as a chaplain, even after the war, in the Reserves, and the National Guard. For twenty-two years. When I retired, I was a lieutenant colonel. Few chaplains achieve that rank.”
He then recounted how, a month after the two bombings, he joined the American forces as they entered Japan after the Japanese surrendered. He ended up in Nagasaki and saw firsthand the people who survived and the suffering they were going through. He found the headquarters, in rubble, of one of the orders of nuns. At the cathedral, he dug out the censer, the top