Pope Francis has said that sometimes we can see things more clearly with tears in our eyes.

In 2015 as he addressed a teen girl who had been living on the streets in the Philippines, the pontiff said, “Certain realities in life can only be seen through eyes cleansed by tears.”

Mihoko Owada, a freelance photographer for the Catholic Standard newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, can relate to that sentiment. In November 2019, as she photographed Pope Francis’s solemn visit to the Atomic Bomb Hypocenter Park in Nagasaki, Japan, during a rainstorm, she had tears in her eyes.

Three years earlier, the Japanese native had been baptized as a Catholic at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. So when the pope visited her home country, she was excited to witness and photograph the spiritual leader of her newfound faith. 

But her tears at Nagasaki flowed because she deeply understood the sorrow of that place, where the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on April 9, 1945 that killed up to 80,000 people, some instantly and others who died after suffering gruesome burns and other injuries and radiation sickness. Three days earlier, the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan that killed as many as 146,000 people. U.S. leaders rationalized the atomic bombs as hastening the end of the deadliest war in human history, leading to Japan’s surrender.

But for the survivors, and generations to follow, those bombings ushered in a new era of the specter of nuclear war potentially causing more untold human suffering and even the end of human life on Earth.

So unlike many anniversaries which are causes for celebration, when Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 in 2020 marked the 75^th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for Mihoko Owada, those anniversaries were days of sorrowful remembrance and a resolve to pray and work for a future without nuclear weapons.

Asked what that 75^th anniversary meant to her, Mihoko said, “I want people to keep talking about this, every year, every day.”

She added, “No more Hiroshimas and no more Nagasakis. It’s up to us.  Never again.”

That issue, she said, “is so close to my heart.”

When she was almost 5 years old, her father took her to the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima.

“I was horrified. I did not understand why humans can do such a terrible thing against other humans,” she said, adding that museum visit “changed me forever,” convincing her that she must work for peace throughout her life. She remembers writing a letter in Japanese as a young girl to the United States, she thinks to the White House, pleading for peace.

On a junior high trip and later as an adult, Mihoko visited Nagasaki, a place that she later described as “a hometown for my soul,” because the Catholic convert learned that Nagasaki had been the center of Japan’s small Catholic population, where the faith had survived centuries of persecution. The atomic bomb exploded near the city’s Catholic cathedral, destroying a structure that had been built with the support of poor farmers and fishermen. An estimated 8,500 of the cathedral’s 12,000 parishioners were killed by the bombing.

So when Pope Francis made his first stop during his 2019 Japan visit to Nagasaki, Mihoko had tears in her eyes as she photographed that event. She knew that as a young Jesuit seminarian, the future pope had dreamed of one day becoming a missionary priest serving in Japan, and on this day he achieved his dream, but as a pope coming as a missionary of peace.

“A world of peace, free from nuclear weapons, is the aspiration of millions of men and women everywhere,” Pope Francis said, noting that he was in a city that had witnessed “the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of a nuclear attack.”

The pope decried how the arms race wastes resources that could benefit human development and protect the environment. “In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance and sale of ever more destructive weapons, are an affront crying out to heaven,” he said.

Near where the pope spoke, a famous photograph by U.S. Marine photographer Joe O’Donnell was displayed on an easel, showing a boy after the atomic bomb had devastated Nagasaki, carrying the body of his dead baby brother on his back. Pope Francis had that image reprinted as a prayer card, describing that heart-rending scene with the words “…The fruit of war.”

Later near the altar where the pope celebrated Mass at a baseball stadium in Nagasaki, another remnant of the bombing’s horror was displayed – a charred statue of Mary pulled from the wreckage of the city’s cathedral.

Mihoko said those reminders of the human cost of the atomic bombings must be remembered more than photos of demolished buildings, and she noted how Pope Francis has warned about a “culture of indifference” that can help people forget or look past the sufferings of others. That indifference, she said, can lead people to minimize the more than 160,000 COVID-19 deaths so far in the United States, and forget how people suffered and died after the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

She pointed out how Richland High School in Washington state, located near the site where plutonium was manufactured for use in the nuclear bomb that detonated over Nagasaki, has mushroom cloud logos displayed at the school, which has “Bombers” as its mascot.

“The world is obligated to learn and teach the truth about nuclear weapons, what really happened under the mushroom cloud, the human toll,” she said.

Mihoko noted that “we Japanese have been given a special mission to convey peace, as we know the horror of war and atomic bombs.”

The United States, as the only country in the world to drop atomic bombs on people, also has a special responsibility to work for a future free of the threat of nuclear war, she said. Mihoko said she has been heartbroken to hear people, including fellow Catholics in the United States -- where she moved to as an adult and has worked as a translator for various institutions – describe the atomic bombs dropped on Japan as a “necessary evil.” In the decades since those bombings, nations with nuclear weapons have built up their arsenals for the stated goal of deterrence.

“It’s important to see the reality with open eyes and an open heart,” Mihoko said. “We don’t want this to happen ever again to any human being.”

She believes that like Pope Francis, today’s Catholics can likewise be missionaries of peace, and she draws inspiration from the story of Dr. Takashi Nagai, a physician who cared for survivors after the atomic bomb hit Nagasaki, even while he was suffering from a serious head injury. After working around the clock, he returned home two days later to find his house destroyed and his beloved wife Midori dead. 

Amid her ashes, he found a melted rosary that she prayed with. Dr. Nagai -- who had converted to the Catholic faith as a young man -- became a world famous advocate for peace and forgiveness after the war before dying of leukemia six years later at the age of 43. His cause for sainthood is now under consideration.

Like Pope Francis, Dr. Nagai knew the importance of tears. He once wrote, “Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don’t understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven’t cried, you can’t dry another’s eyes. Unless you’ve walked in darkness, you can’t help wanderers find the way. Unless you’ve looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can’t help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive.”