Professor Chad Diehl, a historian at the University of Virginia, said he learned about Dr. Takashi Nagai while visiting the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, which had an exhibit dedicated to the Catholic community and Nagai. “I was fascinated by the fact that Nagasaki was home to the largest community of Catholics in Japan,” Diehl said. “I was confused by the realization that a mostly Christian nation, the United States, had dropped a bomb on that community. And I was compelled to learn more about them, and especially about their parishioner leader, Nagai Takashi.”