Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge was in frail condition on the morning of the explosion. Being a foreigner, even a German, he felt strain of being in a xenophobic Japan. In the book, Father Kleinsorge was described as being "thirty-eight, the look of a boy growing too fast-thin in the face, with a prominent Adam's apple, a hollow chest, dangling hands, big feet. He walked clumsily, leaning forward." He was also said to have been suffering from diarrhea, which was painful. He blamed the diarrhea on the beans and black ration bread he ate.
On the morning of the explosion Father Kleinsorge went up to the third floor of the mission house and into a room where he took off all his clothes except his underwear. He stretched out onto a cot and began to read his Stimmen der Zeit. There was a terrible flash, which reminded Father Kleinsorge of something he had read as a boy about a large meteor colliding with the earth. The one thought he had time for was, "A bomb has fallen directly on us." Kleinsorge never new how he got out of his house. In the book it says, "The next thing he was conscious of was wandering in the mission's vegetable garden in his underwear, bleeding slightly from small cuts on his left flank."
After being united with the other priests, The daughter of the mission catechist ran up to Father Kleinsorge and said that her mother and sister were buried under the ruins of their house. Father Kleinsorge went to the house and began lifting things off the top of the pile. He than freed Mrs. Hoshijima and her daughter. Father Kleinsorge also stemmed one of the priest's, Father Schiffer's, cut that was above his left ear. He than ran back into the mission house and found the jacket of his military uniform and a pair of gray trousers. After that a woman ran up to him and said that her husband was buried under her house and that Father Kleinsorge should save him. Father Kleinsorge never could find him. After going back to the Catholic...
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