The Japanese regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi was very friendly with these Franciscans. It was a time when Jesuits were facing lot of opposition in Japan. The people of Japan appreciated the simple way of living adopted by these Franciscan missionaries. It helped them to accelerate their conversion program. Many Japanese, including their overlords, began to accept Christianity. Slowly Japan became the great center of evangelization for the Franciscan missionaries. Clouds of adversity In October 1596, the Spanish ship San Felipe, bound from Manila to Acapulco, was driven by typhoons to the coast of Japan. It was laden with gold and silver when it beached on a sandbar in Urado Bay. The pilot of the ship, Francisco de Olandia, while conversing with the Japanese customs officials, spoke of and boasted that the King of Spain had captured many countries in the world. He told them that the King of Spain sent the missionaries first to instigate the people against their ruler. When the matter was reported to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he became enraged. The situation was exploited by Yakuin Zenso, his physician and close advisor. The shogun issued an order to arrest and execute all Christian missionaries in Japan. The Franciscans, including Bautista, Garcia and others were arrested on 8 December 1596 and were sentenced to death. There were three Jesuits also, including the native seminarian, Paul Miki. Road to martyrdom On 4 January the prisoners who had been sentenced to death began their journey from Kyoto. They traveled six hundred miles from Kyoto to Nagasaki through Sakai, Okayama, Hiroshima, Shimonoseki, and Karatsu. They reached Nagasaki on 4 February 1597. The next morning they were taken to a hill known as Nishigaoka. As Garcia was prominent among the missionaries, he was given the middle place. The execution started at 10 o'clock in the morning. He, Peter Baptist, and the other friars were crucified, along with fifteen teenage boys who were members of the Third Order of Saint Francis, as well as the three Jesuits. The condemned were so tired that they could not endure it for long and within half an hour everything was over. The two soldiers who worked as executioners completed their task by stabbing their spears into the missionaries' chests. The Portuguese and Japanese Christians attending the execution broke past the guards and started soaking pieces of cloth in the blood of the executed, gathering lumps of the blood-soaked dirt,