hey, too, feared that we might be
Americans who had parachuted in. When we arrived in Nagatsuka, it had
just become dark.

We took under our care fifty refugees who had lost everything. The
majority of them were wounded and not a few had dangerous burns.
Father Rektor treated the wounds as well as he could with the few
medicaments that we could, with effort, gather up. He had to confine
himself in general to cleansing the wounds of purulent material. Even
those with the smaller burns are very weak and all suffered from
diarrhea. In the farm houses in the vicinity, almost everywhere, there
are also wounded. Father Rektor made daily rounds and acted in the
capacity of a painstaking physician and was a great Samaritan. Our
work was, in the eyes of the people, a greater boost for Christianity
than all our work during the preceding long years.

Three of the severely burned in our house died within the next few
days. Suddenly the pulse and respirations ceased. It is certainly a
sign of our good care that so few died. In the official aid stations
and hospitals, a good third or half of those that had been brought in
died. They lay about there almost without care, and a very high
percentage succumbed. Everything was lacking: doctors, assistants,
dressings, drugs, etc. In an aid station at a school at a nearby
village, a group of soldiers for several days did nothing except to
bring in and cremate the dead behind the school.

During the next few days, funeral processions passed our house from
morning to night, bringing the deceased to a small valley nearby.
There, in six places, the dead were burned. People brought their own
wood and themselves did the cremation. Father Luhmer and Father Laures
found a dead man in a nearby house who had already become bloated and
who emitted a frightful odor. They brought him to this valley and
incinerated him themselves. Even late at night, the little valley was
lit up by the funeral pyres.

We made systematic efforts to trace our acquaintances and the families
of the refugees whom we had sheltered. Frequently, after the passage
of several weeks, some one was found in a distant village or hospital
but of many there was no news, and these were apparently dead. We were
lucky to discover the mother of the two children whom we had found in
the park and who had been given up for dead. After three weeks, she
saw her children once again. In the great joy of the reunion were