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Posted on 08/08/2025 3:27:21 PM PDT by nickcarraway
There are not many people who have survived a nuclear attack.
There is only one person who officially survived two.
On this day, 80 years ago, young engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was telling his boss about the horrors he had seen in the Japanese city of Hiroshima when the room went blindingly white.
"I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," he told UK Newspaper, The Independent.
Yamaguchi was an engineer with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yamaguchi, then 29, was in Hiroshima for a business trip when the bomb known as 'Little Boy' was deployed, killing tens of thousands in a flash, and leaving scores with burns so severe their skin draped off their bodies.
The young engineer was around 3 kilometres from ground zero and suffered temporary blindness and deafness in one eardrum.
Hiroshima nuclear bomb survivors remember the day the 'world went dark' Photo shows A Japanese man wearing a dark suit and blue 'Nuke Free' cap, smiling while standing next to a waterwayA Japanese man wearing a dark suit and blue 'Nuke Free' cap, smiling while standing next to a waterway Thousands of people are set to gather to commemorate the 80th anniversary and the catastrophic impacts of the nuclear bombing of Japan's Hiroshima during World War II.
After staying in a bomb shelter the first night with other survivors, he quickly made his way back to his hometown of Nagasaki.
Then on August 9, 1945, he went to work and told his colleagues about the horrors he saw.
"When they realised that I had returned from Hiroshima, everyone gathered around me and said, 'I'm glad you're alive,' and 'great that you have survived,'" he recounted to Japanese broadcaster NHK.
But his boss did not believe him.
"He replied, 'you're badly injured, aren't you? Your head must be damaged too. I can't believe what you're saying. How could a single bomb destroy such a vast area like Hiroshima?'"
Just at that moment, the United States dropped its second atomic bomb, known as 'Fat Man', killing some 40,000 people instantly.
"I immediately recognised it as an atomic bomb," he told NHK.
"I hid under a desk right away."
Too 'healthy' to speak out The city of Nagasaki will pause today to remember the atomic blast that inflicted so much horror on the unsuspecting city.
Within months, 74,000 people were dead after radiation sickness took hold.
The bombing of Nagasaki is often overshadowed by the deadlier and earlier attack on Hiroshima, which killed some 140,000 people by year's end.
Part of the tragedy of Nagasaki is it was not the original intended target.
Two B-29 bombers were sent to destroy the industrial city of Kokura, which was a major hub for ammunition manufacturing.
But the city was hidden under cloud cover, so the pilots diverted to their secondary target: Nagasaki.
A photo of an empty field razed to the ground. Part of the tragedy of Nagasaki is it was not the original intended target. (Reuters)
About 165 people are thought to have survived both atomic blasts, known as nijyuu hibakusha.
But Yamaguchi is the only person to be officially recognised by the local governments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For decades, he kept his unique story under wraps and worked a blue-collar job.
Many atomic bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, feel compelled to speak out, hoping their experiences will spur the world to abandon nuclear weapons.
But the family of Yamaguchi feared he looked too healthy, which would undermine the message of survivors.
"My entire family opposed it," his daughter Toshiko Yamasaki explained at a peace conference in 2011.
"If my father, who had survived two atomic bombings, engaged in peace activities, people might think, 'even after being exposed to radiation twice, he's still healthy, so the atomic bomb isn't scary.'"
A photo of Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He is sitting in a lecture hall, leaning on a cane. It was only in the decade before he died that Tsutomu Yamaguchi started to speak more openly about his ordeal. (Getty Images)
But Yamaguchi did suffer a lifetime of health problems, as is often the case for hibakusha due to radiation exposure.
"My father had cataracts, was deaf in one ear, suffered from leukopenia, lost his hair for 15 years after the war, and had after-effects from burns," Toshiko explained.
His family endured sickness, too. His wife and son died of cancer.
Two-time A-bomb survivor longs for nuclear-free world Photo shows Every morning, Mr Yamaguchi gives thanks before the Lord Buddha for his miraculous life.Every morning, Mr Yamaguchi gives thanks before the Lord Buddha for his miraculous life. A Japanese man who survived the nuclear bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima has never given up praying for disarmament.
It was only in his final decade that Yamaguchi started to speak more openly, hoping his ordeal would help in the fight against nuclear weapons.
"I have walked and crawled through the bottom of hell," he told the ABC in 2009.
"I should be dead. But it was my fate to keep on living."
Irish journalist David McNeill was one of the last journalists to interview him before his death.
"What struck me was how modest he was," he explained.
"Like many hibakusha, he really didn't want to discuss his extraordinary life. He had to be pressed into it because he thought he was better off than many of the people who surrounded him, who were getting sick and dying from cancer."
Yamaguchi died in 2010, aged 93.
The legacy of the twin bombs
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were one of the final and most devastating acts of World War II.
After the first nuclear attack, Japan would still not surrender, instead deciding to send a fact-finding team to the city after communications went dark.
The second attack on Nagasaki was part of the American strategy to make Japan believe it had unlimited supplies of such bombs.
A photo of Nagasaki city after the atomic bombing. All the trees are burnt, most buildings have crumbled, only three remain. The two atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed almost 250,000 people. (Reuters)
Many historians argue the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan was more influential in securing Japan's surrender, as it suddenly exposed its entire unprotected north.
Making a single uranium bomb that exploded over Hiroshima was incredibly challenging and chewed up much of the budget and resourcing of the multi-year Manhattan Project.
Japan knew how challenging it would be.
But the United States had also developed a plutonium bomb — far easier and cheaper than a uranium bomb.
This is what detonated over Nagasaki.
And the commander of the Manhattan Project boasted the United States could then create two or three atomic bombs a month to assist in the planned land invasion of Japan, scheduled for November 1945.
"They had the capacity to make two or three bombs a month by that point," Professor Mordecai Sheftall from Shizuoka explains.
"Because the plutonium production facilities in Hanford, Washington State, were going at full tilt."
Japan finally surrendered on August 15, but only after the emperor intervened and broke a deadlock in his war council.
The army still wanted to fight on.
There are few hibakusha left old enough to remember the blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But the survivors are still determined to keep telling their stories.
After all, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
"As a double atomic bomb survivor, I experienced the bomb twice," Yamaguchi told The Independent in 2010.
"I sincerely hope that there will not be a third."
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Nuke free hat nonsense ?
The anti-nuclear crowd will ignore that.
I know a fellow who “survived” 2 ground level, post-World War II nuclear bomb test blasts, that he observed wearing only his uniform and a special set of goggles, no other protection other than jumping into a trench, as a “test dummy.”
His skin was affected, such that, large finger-tip sized “blisters” formed all around his face and neck, where his skin had “dripped.” The sores healed but the formation of the blister-bubbles remained.
He was 85-86 years old, when I met him. I offered to help him get an appointment with a skin doctor - “just in case” this fellow decided to consult . . . but he did not show up.
I am thankful that the bombs used on Japan, were used at THE END of World War II <— as a warning for all, to never again use them.
Is he Chuck Norris’ father.
Reminds me of this three-legged, blind poodle, “Lucky”.
I know people who have survived exposure to “nuclear waste” - but the affect upon their skin, is bizarre and terrible, visibly. Yet, they live mostly like “ordinary people.”
In the “good old days” of disposing of nuclear waste, the stuff was dumped “here” and “there.” And some people somehow manage to stumble onto it, or effectively drink the net-result that ends up in the water.
Definitely a guy that should avoid Vegas, or gambling in any form, for that matter.
He was an example of why it’s not always good to be like Forrest Gump.
Poet and City Lights Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) commanded a small ship as part of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The submarine chaser, the SC-1308 as a US Navy Lieutenant.
Then he happened to be sent in with the occupation forces where the Nagasaki A bomb blast destruction could be observed 6 weeks after the blast.
I survived both terms of Barack Obama.
That should count for something.
Guy was a fortunate son. My gramps was a doc, did the whole no lead for X-Rays and worked awhile at the Yuma Test station...died of an inoperable sarcoma in his neck
I remember reading of him decades ago! Lucky Man!
He died in 2010 at the age of 93. So he was just slightly younger than my father, who died in 2010 shortly after his 94th birthday. My father would likely have taken part in the invasion of Japan if the bombs had not been dropped (at the time he was recovering from injuries suffered on Okinawa). I wouldn’t be alive.
The bombs were the right thing to do. In the long run it saved millions of Japanese lives and hundreds of thousands of US lives if we had to invade the islands to get a surrender, and so much more hatred between the two sides would have been generated, we would not have acted to get them on their feet again like we did afterwards. There would have been so much more hatred on each side.
Even more interesting is a story of Albert Stevens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Stevens
The most radioactive human, ever.
Injected by mistake with huge dose of radioactive plutonium, he lived full. healthy life.
He died of heart disease 20 years later.
You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms!
The poor guy.
I’m sure his story is worth reading about, but this is one of the worst written articles I have ever read.
Our government started out OK and turned very quickly to the dark side.
Such evil was done by it.
Unreal.
Pinging you to a follow up story - guy survived both atomic bombs “But the family of Yamaguchi feared he looked too healthy, which would undermine the message of survivors.”
The guy lived to 94.
Thank you for posting. Just the other day while traveling I heard that a man had survived both bombs and it was on my to do list to check it.
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