内容摘要：, but they generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.

, but they generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.

After emerging from hiding in 1865, following centuries of violent persecution by Japan’s insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism.Some Hidden Christians, however, continued to follow not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they’d nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime.

On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to what they call the Closet God — scroll paintings of Mary and Jesus, disguised as a Buddhist Bodhisattva and hidden in special closets. They still chant in a Latin that hasn’t been widely used in centuries.Now, though, the Hidden Christians are disappearing. Almost all are elderly, and as the young move to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this unique offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean.“At this point, I’m afraid we are going to be the last ones,” said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can recite the Latin chants his ancestors learned 400 years ago.

Here are some key takeaways from The Associated Press’ extensive reporting on a dwindling group of faithful who still worship today as their ancestors did when forced underground in the 17th century.Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests converted warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki.

Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion.

That changed after the shoguns began to see the religion as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce.Here is a by-the-numbers look at Goodyear airships over time:

Goodyear establishes an Aeronautics Department to build lighter-than-air aircrafts, and by 1912 the company had built its first balloon.In 1930, the “Defender” blimp became the first airship in the world to carry a lit neon sign so the company’s name could be seen after dark.

Goodyear began making airships for the U.S. Navy in 1917, and its first blimp — the first commercial non-rigid airship flown using helium — launched years later, becoming a marketing tool.From 1942 to 1944, the company built more than 150 airships for the Navy to serve in World War II, flying patrol over warships on the seas with zero reported loss of ships when a blimp was on watch.