Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs

As World War II ended, President Harry Truman faced the prospect of an expensive invasion of Japan. There needed to be a swift end to the war.

To facilitate this, he decided to deploy the United States' new weapon, the atomic bomb. The attack worked, and Japan soon surrendered, marking the end of World War II.

However, this decision would lead to the death of 226,000. Most of these were civilians going about their daily lives. It would also destroy two cities.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of those civilians, but uniquely, he was the only person not just to survive one of the bombs but both of them.

Hiroshima

Yamaguchi was a twenty-nine-year-old naval engineer. He had been away from his family for three months, working in Hiroshima with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

The day, 6 August 1945, started much the same as any; it was his last day in the city, and we can only imagine he was looking forward to seeing his wife and son again.

Around 8:15 that morning, he walked towards the shipyard, where he had been designing a new oil tanker. He heard the drone of an aircraft and looked up. He saw an American B-29 bomber drop a small object connected to a parachute.

The sky erupted into a flash of light. Yamaguchi was quick to act. He dived into a ditch, putting his hand over his head, covering his eyes and jamming his fingers into his ears. This action saved his life; a woman walking alongside him when the bomb hit was never seen again.

The shockwave that accompanied the bomb sucked Yamaguchi from the ground, spun him in the air like a tornado and hurled him away. He was two miles from ground zero.

I think I fainted for a while. When I opened my eyes, everything was dark, and I couldn't see much. It was like the start of a film at the cinema before the picture has begun when the blank frames are just flashing up without any sound. - Yamaguchi

Escaping Hiroshima

The bomb resulted in a torrent of falling ash and a mushroom cloud of fire. Yamaguchi had severe burns to his face and arms and had ruptured both eardrums.

He wandered in a daze to what remained of the shipyard. He spent a restless night in an air raid shelter before deciding it was time to leave.

On 7 August, he made his way with two colleagues who had also survived to the train station. He walked through a nightmarish landscape of burning fires, shattered buildings and charred corpses.

The bridge was a twisted wreckage at one river crossing, and he was forced to swim through a sea of dead bodies. Upon reaching the station, he boarded the train with the rest of the bewildered burnt passengers.

The Hiroshima bomb, nicknamed 'Little Boy', killed 80,000 when it fell; thousands more would perish in the following weeks.

Nagasaki

Yamaguchi arrived in Nagasaki the following day. He arrived on the morning of 8 August and limped to the hospital, where he found a former classmate.

The blackened burns made him unrecognisable to his friend. He returned to his wife feverish and swaddled in bandages.

The next morning, he dragged himself out of bed and went to work at the Mitsubishi's main office. The managing director immediately called him into the office, asking for a full report on the bombing.

The director told Yamaguchi he was mad; how could one bomb destroy a city? Moments later, the landscape exploded outside with another white flash.

Yamaguchi again dropped to the ground as the shock wave shattered the windows and debris rained. This time, the combination of the landscape and a metal staircase would shield Yamaguchi.

He was two miles from the epicentre of the bomb called 'Fat Boy' by the Americans.

Aftermath

Yamaguchi rushed home, fearing that his wife and son would have been killed in the blast. He found them both having sustained superficial injuries.

The pair had taken a trip to find some burn lotion for Yamaguchi. When the explosion came, they had taken refuge in a tunnel.

The family believe that if Hiroshima hadn't hurt Yamaguchi, his family would have been killed in Nagasaki.

After the two bombs, Yamaguchi's hair fell out, and the wounds on his arms turned gangrenous. He would also vomit continuously. But, unlike many radiation exposure victims, he slowly recovered from his injuries.

Yamaguchi

Yamaguchi went on to live a long and relatively normal life. He became a translator for the U.S. armed forces and then went on to teach in a school before resuming his career as an engineer with Mitsubishi.

The couple went on to have two girls in the 1950s. Yamaguchi would deal with his ordeal by writing poetry. He would refuse to speak about his experiences before 2000 when he felt it was his duty to speak for the anti-atomic weapons movement.

Yamaguchi remains the only person officially recognised as a "nijyuu hibakusha," twice bombed person. This distinction was awarded to him in 2009 by the Japanese government.

He suffered from several radiation-related ailments, such as cataracts and leukaemia. His wife also suffered signs of radiation poisoning. She died at the age of eighty-eight from kidney and liver cancer. In 2010, Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer at the age of ninety-three.

Heroes and Villians

Within any war, there are heroes and villains. I have spoken about the Comfort Women and Unit 731 atrocities Japan committed. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese civilians is an atrocity committed by America.

In today's times, it is worth remembering whether something is an act of war or a war crime depends on which side of the fence you sit.

What is universally true is that regardless of who you support or condemn, innocent people die on both sides. We rarely see a politician on the frontline.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. - Jean-Paul Sartre