Sometimes you are in the wrong place at the
wrong time but it seems lady luck has your back. We might take the case of Dutch cyclist Maarten
de Jonge who was said to have cheated death twice after being scheduled to travel on the
two doomed flights, Malaysia Airlines MH17 and MH370, but he didn’t end up getting
on either plane. But what about the Croatian man Frane Selak. It’s said he has escaped death no less than
seven times, including being on a train that flipped off tracks and hurtled into a river. 17 died, but not him. It’s said on his first plane trip he was
blown out of the door, fell to Earth and landed on a haystack. He was ok, but 19 people died that day. He survived more deadly events and then won
over a million dollars in the lottery in 2003. But today we have a special case for you concerning
the few human beings that have been on the right side of fortune. He’s special because no one that ever existed
has been in his shoes. Many people have been lone survivors of catastrophe,
but there is no person on record that has survived two nuclear bombs. We are of course talking about the two bombs
the USA dropped on Japan at the end of the second world war. The first of those bombs was dropped on the
Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the second bomb was dropped on the city
of Nagasaki three days later. Just before we introduce you to our man of
the day, we should probably look at just how lucky he was. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing it’s
thought that the population of the city was around 340,000–350,000. Many of those people recounted later that
they heard an explosion and saw a very bright light. Many others saw the same, but were unable
to later recount their experience because they were dead. It’s said that of the entire city population
around 70,000 or 80,000 people either died instantly or died soon after due to severe
burns. So, that’s a rather large chunk of the population,
and we should say that many more people died later from injury or radiation exposure. You can try and find total deaths in historical
resources, but no one seems to agree on the number. Many resources say that just months after
the bomb was dropped the death toll was around 140,000, not that much less than half of the
city’s residents. The U.S. Department of Energy tells us after
five years the number could have been as high as 200,000, while some Japanese resources
say even higher. While these deaths were from long-term effects,
the man in today’s show sailed through decades after the bombs were dropped. On top of that, the Japanese later said that
around 70 percent of the city’s buildings were totally destroyed and quite a few more
were damaged. Getting out of this almost unscathed was not
easy by any means. But as we know, the Allies weren’t finished
just yet. Over in the industrial city of Nagasaki, the
population at the time of the bombing was said to be in the region of 260,000. These people were about to get their version
of a big bang and a very bright light. The star of today’s show was about to experience
this for the second time in three days. Many of the city’s factory workers, families,
and students, were instantly killed, but again, the exact number varies and you can find wide
estimates. The number given for immediate deaths after
the bomb is usually 40,000 to 75,000, but most agree that by the end of 1945 the number
was around 80,000. The U.S. Department of Energy tells us that
after five years you could probably double that number. So, that’s around 160,000. Let’s just say that at the time of the bombing
maybe close to a third of Nagasaki’s residents (also non-residents such as POWs) died. No doubt the focus of our show today was asking
himself if dropping the second bomb was overkill. Many people today say there was really no
need to hit a second city, but we won’t get into that. Ok, so it’s about time we introduce you
to our man. His name was Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was born in 1916 and lived until 2010,
making him a natural survivor as well as someone who’s dodged a rather large bullet a couple
of times. Just so you know, while others may have survived
both bombs, he is the only person who the Japanese government recognize as doing so. Ok, so Mr. Yamaguchi in this thirties actually
lived in Nagasaki, but he made the unfortunate decision, or was told, to go to Hiroshima
on a business trip in the month of August, 1945. At the time he was working for Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries, and it’s said business wasn’t exactly booming as Japan was suffering
in its war effort. In fact, Yamaguchi, who never thought Japan
would go to war, said later in interviews that he had considered killing his entire
family with pills if Japan lost. He also explained what happened on the big
day. When the blast occurred in Hiroshima he said
he had just got off a tram. What’s surprising is that this tram was
a mere two miles (3km) from Ground Zero. In an interview in 2005 he said this of the
moment it all happened, “It was very clear, a really fine day, nothing unusual about it
at all. I was in good spirits. As I was walking along I heard the sound of
a plane, just one. I looked up into the sky and saw the B-29,
and it dropped two parachutes. I was looking up at them, and suddenly it
was like a flash of magnesium, a great flash in the sky, and I was blown over.” Three miles away is certainly close enough
to be one of those immediate fatalities we talked about. He didn’t exactly take it on the chin, though,
explaining that he was temporarily blinded, had his eardrums popped and suffered burns
to the top half of his body. He later said this, “When the noise and
the blast had subsided I saw a huge mushroom-shaped pillar of fire rising up high into the sky. It was like a tornado.” In another interview he said, “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.” Believe it or not, he told the press years
later he decided the best thing to do was to go back home to Nagasaki and report for
work. Covered in bandages he made his way the next
day to the train station, looking at the devastation around him, risking radiation poisoning (he
didn’t know that), to find a way back to his presumably safe city. He said he encountered dead bodies strewn
around; it was mayhem. Bodies floated in the river like blocks of
wood, he said. He had to cross that river since the bridge
was destroyed, saying he trod on the bodies of women and children and men, what he called
his “Human raft.” Walking through the streets he described what
he saw, people, bodies, “their skin had peeled, their flesh was wet and mushy … And
they had no faces! Their eyes, noses and mouths had been burned
away, and it looked like their ears had melted off.” He managed to get back to Nagasaki and was
relieved to find his wife and 6-month old son alive and well. News didn’t travel too fast back in those
days, and Yamaguchi told his bosses of the devastation a bomb had caused in Hiroshima. He said they didn’t believe him that just
one bomb could flatten a whole city and they questioned his sanity. They would soon know exactly what he was talking
about, because their city was next. This is what he said in a translated interview
with the American media many years later, “I was telling my company supervisor in
Nagasaki that one bomb had destroyed all of Hiroshima. He told me I was crazy. Just as he said that - the bomb fell on Nagasaki.” He also said just before that happened his
boss had said to him, “You're an engineer! Calculate it. How could one bomb...destroy a whole city?” BOOM! That’s how, might have been the answer. On the day of the bombing yet again Yamaguchi
was about three miles from Ground Zero. Again he was knocked to the ground, but he
managed to get to his feet and had no idea what was going on. You must remember that the world had no idea
something so powerful existed, it wasn’t as if Yamaguchi had watched infomercials that
people in the West saw years later talking about the deadly destruction of an atomic
bomb. Yamaguchi later said in an interview, “I
thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima.” This time his family weren’t so safe, and
while they weren’t as close to ground zero as the patriarch, they felt the bomb. In a strange twist of fate, his wife that
day had been out looking to buy ointment that could help with her husband’s burns. Her house was much closer to ground zero than
the place she was at the time of the explosion. Yamaguchi later said that the fact he’d
been hit by the first bomb might have saved his wife from the second bomb. Even so, Yamaguchi’s daughter said years
later in an interview that her mother had told her she was “soaked in black rain and
was poisoned.” She lived until 88, but did die of liver and
kidney cancer. Her brother would also succumb to cancer in
his 50s and her older sister she said had been chronically ill her entire life. She even said that she believes her mother
passed the poison she had been engulfed with to them. During life after the bombings Yamaguchi was
quiet and very rarely spoke about his experience, but later he said he felt compelled to talk
about the horror of nuclear war. “My double radiation exposure is now an
official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying
history of the atomic bombings even after I die,” he said. In a separate interview he also said, “Having
been granted this miracle it is my responsibility to pass on the truth to the people of the
world.” One day Yamaguchi said he hoped there would
be no bombs that destructive in the world, that countries would agree not to chase such
technology that could almost destroy every person on the planet and undo civilization
as we know it. In one of his final interviews he said, “Japan
can't rid the world of nuclear weapons by itself. The whole world needs to hold hands and prevent
this type of war. Mr. Obama is now the US President and I listened
to his speech. Maybe there is hope.” He died in January, 2010, from stomach cancer. What do you think about this survivor’s
tale? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other show
The Luckiest Unlucky Man That Ever Lived. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
