According to Nagai, when he drank water taken from Lourdes in Honkawachi, where Fr. Kolbe had founded a monastery, he heard a voice urge him to ask an intercession from the priest. Postwar years He returned to the district of Urakami (the epicenter of the bomb) on 15 October 1945 and built a small hut (about six tatami from pieces of his old house. He remained there with his two surviving children (Makoto and Kayano), his mother-in-law, and two other relatives. In 1947, the local Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SSVDP) built a simple two-tatami teahouse-like structure for him. Nagai named it "Nyokodo" (如己堂, Nyoko-dō to, literally "As-Yourself Hall", after Jesus' words, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He styled it as a hermitage and spent his remaining years in prayer and contemplation. For six months, he observed mourning for Midori and let his beard and hair grow. On 23 November 1945, a mass was celebrated, in front of the ruins of the cathedral, for the victims of the bomb. Takashi gave a speech filled with faith, comparing the victims to a sacred offering to obtain peace. In the following years, Nagai resumed teaching and began to write books. The first of these, The Bells of Nagasaki, was completed by the first anniversary of the bombing. Although he failed to find a publisher at first, eventually it became a best seller and the basis for a top box-office movie in Japan. In July 1946, he collapsed on a station platform. Now disabled, he was henceforth confined to bed. In 1948, he used 50,000 yen paid by Kyushu Times to plant 1,000 three-year-old sakura (cherry) trees in the district of Urakami to transform this devastated land into a "Hill of Flowers". Although some have been replaced, these cherry trees are still called "Nagai Senbonzakura" ("1,000 cherry trees of Nagai"); their flowers decorate the houses of Urakami in spring. By 2010, the numbers of these cherry trees were reduced to only about 20 due to aging and other causes. On 3 December 1949, he was made freeman of the city of Nagasaki. He received a visit from Helen Keller in October 1948. He was visited, in 1949, by Emperor Hirohito and by Cardinal Gilroy of Australia, a papal emissary. Death On 1 May 1951, he asked to be transported to the college hospital in Nagasaki so that the medical students could observe