After the Japanese attacked Nanjing and Shanghai, governors from fourteen Chinese provinces (states) held a series of meetings at Nan Hua Monastery in an attempt to develop a coordinated defensive policy and strategy for resisting the Japanese invaders These meetings were supposed to be top secret; but the Japanese, who had established an air base at Guang Zhou (Canton City), quickly learned about them.
Of course, though later everyone tried to blame the security leak on spies within one or another governor's staff, the fact is that, in the way that politicians usually are, nobody took much trouble to conceal the meetings. The governors and their entourages arrived splendidly... in limousines. There was enough dazzling chromium in Nan Hua's parking lot to attract the attention of someone on Mars. The Japanese in Guang Zhou, certainly, had no trouble in targeting this secret political meeting place.
Therefore, in an effort to destroy so many important civilian leaders in one strike, the Japanese sent three fighter-bombers north to attack Nan Hua monastery
When the planes began to bomb and strafe the monastery complex, Xu Yun immediately ordered everyone to take cover and to remain calm. He sent the governors into the Sixth Patriarch's Temple and the monks into the larger Ming Temple. He, himself, calmly went into the most obvious target, the Meditation Hall, to pray for everyone's safety.
In the first run, one of the two men who were assigned to guard the governors' cars, was killed. He had left his post and had taken cover in a large sewer pipe that was destined to be used in the rebuilding project, and one of the bombs fell on the sewer pipe, killing him. Ironically, the other guard remained at his post in the very visible guardhouse, and he escaped injury.
Another bomb whistled down to earth and struck just outside the monastery walls, destroying a large Joshu cedar tree and creating a hole in the ground that is still there today, filled with water, like a small pond.
But then, after Xu Yun entered the Meditation Hall and began to pray, a miracle occurred. Two of the three bombers crashed into each other and fell to earth at Ma Ba Mountain. The remaining airplane immediately returned to its base in Guang Zhou.
Naturally, the midair crash was credited to Xu Yun's spiritual power. All the Chinese who knew him had no doubt about this; but what is more important, the Japanese evidently began to believe it, too. Governors or no governors, they never again attempted to bomb Nan Hua.
