He Survived Two Atomic Bombs While Over 226,000 People Lost Their Lives, And He Lived To Be 93
As World War Two was nearing its end in 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.
The first bomb struck the city of Hiroshima, and three days later, the other hit the city of Nagasaki. The cities were completely destroyed, and over 226,000 people lost their lives, but one man miraculously survived both blasts without any debilitating injuries.
On August 6, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi had been preparing to leave Hiroshima and return home to his family.
At the time, he was 29-years-old and married to his wife, Hisako. They had an infant son named Katsutoshi. It was his last day in the city after a three-month-long business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi.
That morning, he had been walking to the shipyard of his workplace when he saw an aircraft flying overhead.
He watched as the plane dropped a small object over the city, and suddenly, a burst of light filled the sky. He dove into a ditch just in time before the ear-splitting boom of the explosion pierced the air.
The explosion threw him backward, leaving him with bad burns and ruptured eardrums. The atomic blast had caused ash, dust, and debris to surround the area, blocking out the sun.
In the Mitsubishi shipyard, he found the remains of the factory building, along with two coworkers who had survived the blast.
They spent the night in a makeshift shelter and headed to the train station the next day, which was somehow still operating.
hunterkitty – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
On August 8, Yamaguchi arrived home in Nagasaki and headed straight to the hospital for treatment of his severe burns.
A day later, he went to work to report on what he had seen in Hiroshima. During the meeting, another bomb exploded outside.
The reinforced walls of the office building saved him from the nuclear blast. In both incidents, he had been less than two miles from each of the blast zones.
After the second bombing, Yamaguchi rushed to his family and found their home reduced to rubble. Luckily, his wife and son had been out shopping for burn ointment. They had taken shelter in a tunnel and survived.
The double doses of radiation that Yamaguchi had experienced took its toll in the days that followed.
He became extremely sick, but over time, he managed to recover and live a normal life, unlike many other victims of radiation exposure. In the 1950s, he and his wife even had two more children, both of them girls.
Yamaguchi has been the only person recognized by the Japanese government as a “twice-bombed” person.
He was awarded with the distinction in 2009. A year later, he died of stomach cancer at the age of 93.
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