Tsutomu Yamaguchi – Survived 2 atomic bombs

Time stranded: 2 days

Distance traveled: 260 miles

Terrain types: City

Deaths: 250,000 +

Situation ended: War ended

Location: Hiroshima, Nagasaki – Japan

For the United States, the day they dropped the first atomic bomb onto a Japanese city meant it would finally bring an end to the war and force the country to surrender, but for Tsutomu Yamaguchi it was just another day away from home a business trip. On August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on the last part of a three month long business trip when unknown to him, an American bomber was flying at high altitude towards the city. The plane was called the “Enola Gay” and carried a very special cargo that was named “Fat Man”.

The bay doors of the American bomber opened and Fat Man fell to earth over the city of Hiroshima, its solid plutonium core exploding on impact. The blast was so bright and powerful that anyone who saw it directly was blinded, and most who heard it were deafened by the sound. Tens of thousands of people were vaporized by the immeasurable heat and radiation that tore through buildings and flesh without effort, but Yamaguchi wasn’t one of them. Later on during an interview with “The Times” he described the blast as follows:

“I didn’t know what had happened. 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”

The bomb known as Fat Man killed as many as 146,000 people, over half of which died the same day as the explosion, with the rest falling ill to radiation poisoning and later succumbing to their wounds. As for Yamaguchi, his skin was badly burned and the explosion ruptured both his ear drums, but he was still able to walk and not fatally injured. After the initial shock had worn off he was able to find two of his co-workers, and they spent the night in an air raid shelter before making their way to the train station the next morning in an attempt to get back to their home city of Nagasaki.

(The ruined city of Hiroshima after the blast)

The bomb had landed in the center of the city only 3 km away which caused havoc for miles around. The train station was the fastest way back home but it involved walking through a still burning city filled with dead and wounded. Many of the cities bridges were destroyed in the blast and at one point, Yamaguchi and his co-workers were forced to wade through a crossing filled with bodies blown into the water from further upriver.

After making their way through the rubble they eventually came to the train station which through pure luck hadn’t been touched. The plan was to evacuate the city so being allowed to leave wasn’t an issue and the train network operated constantly to get as many people out as it could. Yamaguchi boarded a train headed for Nagasaki and settled in for the overnight journey beside dozens of other burnt and wounded survivors.

Yamaguchi arrived in Nagasaki on 8 August, and went straight home to see his wife and child, both of which were unharmed. The hospitals of Japan weren’t equipped to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear explosion in a major city, and so Yamaguchi was unable to receive any real treatment and ended up with nothing more than some bandages. Despite his wounds he still got out of bed the next day and went into work at the Mitsubishi’s Nagasaki branch.

On August 9, 1945, at around 11am Yamaguchi was called into a meeting with the company director who wanted to know what happened at Hiroshima. He was recalling the events of what happened when the land outside began to shake and a bright white flash rapidly built up over the hills. Yamaguchi immediately dived to the floor before the shock wave hit which shattered all the windows in the building and caused a pressure blast strong enough to knock off all of Yamaguchi’s bandages.

Unknown to everyone in Japan, the bombing in Hiroshima wasn’t a one-off and the Enola Gay had taken off earlier that day from an airbase on the Pacific island of Tinian carrying another bomb called “Little Boy”.

The bomb landed close to the city center of Nagasaki about 3km away from Yamaguchi, which was about the same distance away from the first bombing in Hiroshima. Unlike the first bomb, Yamaguchi had more to protect him from the blast than a city of wooden and concrete buildings, because Nagasaki was surrounded by flowing hills and the room he was in at the time just so happened to be behind a thick, reinforced stairwell. From this blast Yamaguchi didn’t receive any direct injuries apart from a few small cuts and bruises, but he didn’t escape the radiation wave that washed over the area.

Yamaguchi climbed out of the wreckage of his workplace and ran to find his wife and child who were both much closer to where the bomb dropped. Luckily for Yamaguchi, his wife had taken the baby and gone out looking for burn ointment for her husband and was close to a tunnel when the explosion happened. Both of them were unharmed in the blast but were hit by the radiation that followed, though not to the extent were it seemed to badly effect them. Yamaguchi on the other hand wasn’t doing so well and showed signs of acute radiation sickness.

His hair fell out, and he was throwing up for almost a week straight. After the blast he took his family to stay in a bomb shelter, and they were still there when the Emperor of Japan announced their surrender to the Allies. Yamaguchi later said in an interview that he wasn’t happy or sad to hear their country had surrendered because at the time he was being sick non-stop while watching his hair fall out. He was convinced he was going to die but somehow seemed to make a natural recovery and went on to live a normal life along with his wife and child who also survived.

Even though many people survived at least one of the blasts, Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person who has been officially recognized by the Japanese government as being a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.