August 9
Bombed Mary, Nagasaki, Kyūshū, Japan
In 1571, the port of Nagasaki was established by Portuguese
traders, Jesuit missionaries, and a wealthy convert, Omura Sumitada. Most
of its inhabitants were Catholic. But in 1587, Japanese nationalist leader
Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned missionaries. For the next three centuries,
Nagasaki's Catholic community was repeatedly suppressed and persecuted. After
the Japanese government revoked its ban on Christianity in 1873, many
exiles returned to Nagasaki and began building a cathedral in the Urakami
district under the direction of Father Pierre Fraineau of the Missions
Etrangères de Paris. Consecrated in 1914, but not completed until 1925,
the handmade brick cathedral was the largest Catholic church in Asia. In
1929, a wooden statue of the Immaculate
Conception, carved in Italy after Murillo's painting in the Prado, was
placed over the altar.
On August 9, 1945, the US aircraft Bockscar dropped an atomic bomb that destroyed much of Nagasaki, killing over 70,000 people and leveling the cathedral while priests were hearing confessions. That fall, Trappist monk Kaemon Noguchi, a native of Urakami recently discharged from military service, found the blackened head of Our Lady's statue in the rubble and took it back to his monastery in Hokkaido. In 1975, he returned it to Nagasaki. The Virgin's head was on display at Junshin Women's College, the Urakami Cathedral Hall of the Believers, and the Atomic Bomb Museum before returning to the Cathedral—rebuilt in 1959—where it has resided in its own chapel since 2000. A new chapel in the cathedral was dedicated August 9, 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing.
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Also commemorated this date:
 | Notre-Dame de la Motte, Vesoul, Haute-Saône, Franche-Comté, France. Monumental statue blessed, 1857. Procession August 15. |
| Madonna dell'Ellera, Cortona, Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy. First stone of Santa Maria Nuova sanctuary placed, 1550. |
| Madonna della Lettera, Rome, Italy. Fresco brought to Church of St. Peter in Chains, 1714. |
| Madonna di Montalto, Messina, Sicily, Italy. French forces repelled by white-veiled lady over city walls, 1282. |
| Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, Guanajuato Capital, Mexico. Statue arrived, 1557. Fiesta fourth Sunday in November. |
| Virgen del Castillo, Villa de Vilches, Jaén, Andalucía, Spain. Declared town patron by papal decree, 1784. Fiesta August 14-15. |