Amazing: Man Survived Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombings


Hiroshima

Is Tsutomu Yamaguchi the luckiest man of the 20th century?

Yamaguchi is one of the only people who survived not only the Hiroshima bombing, but the obliteration of Nagasaki three days later.

After many years of campaigning Yanaguchi has finally received official recognition of his survival; as he told a Japanese newspaper, “My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die.”

Mr Yamaguchi is a freak of history, victim of a fate. In 1945, he was working in Hiroshima where the world’s first atomic bomb exploded, on 6 August 1945. 140,000 people died as a result of the explosion; by pure chance, Mr Yamaguchi was spared.

Stunned and injured, reeling from the horrors around him, he left the city for the only place he could have gone – his home town, Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west. There, on 9th August, the second atomic bomb exploded over his heads.

(I believe Yamaguchi was with two others, Mr Sato and Mr Iwanaga, during both bombings and as far as I can tell they also survived)


Posted on March 25, 2009 | Filed Under Life

One Response to Amazing: Man Survived Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombings

  1. 36 Pictures Marking The Anniversary Of The Hiroshima Bombings | djmick: V2 Says:

    [...] Read the amazing story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the only people who survived not only the Hiroshima bombing, but the obliteration of Nagasaki three days later. [...]

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