the man who survived the dropping of two atomic bombs.

This is Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the man who survived the dropping of two atomic bombs.⁣ ⁣Tsutomu was a 29-year-old engineer at Mitsubishi who was working as a draftsman, designing oil tankers. August 6, 1945 was supposed to be his last day in Hiroshima before going back home to his wife and infant son.



At 8:15 AM, an American B-29 bomber flew over the city and dropped the first atomic bomb. Tsutomu was less than two miles away from ground zero. The blast ruptured his eardrums and burned his upper torso.⁣⁣ The city was leveled, and 80,000 people were dead.⁣

After spending the night in a bomb shelter, Tsutomu continued his travel back home to Nagasaki, despite his injuries. On the morning of August 9, he returned to work. When Tsutomu told his boss about what happened, he was labeled as “crazy” for thinking a single bomb could destroy an entire city. As his boss was grilling him, “…the same white light filled the room.”⁣ “I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima,” he said.⁣ 40,000 people were killed instantly.⁣ Six days later, Japan surrendered.⁣

Tsutomu and his family survived the second atomic bomb, however, they suffered from chronic health problems. Tsutomu’s daughter described how her mother had been “soaked in black rain and was poisoned”, and she believed that “…she passed the poison on to us,” revealing that her brother had died of cancer at age 59 and how her sister has been chronically ill since birth.⁣

Tsutomu remained healthy. Later in life, he spoke out against the use of atomic weapons and called for its abolishment. Despite his experience during the war, he always tried to keep a positive outlook on his life. “I could have died on either of those days. Everything that follows is bonus.” He died at the age of 93 in 2010.

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