This Man Had a Terrible Week
On the morning of August 6th, 1945, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries employee Tsutomu Yamaguchi was going about his work while on an out of town business trip. Unfortunately, the business trip was to Hiroshima, so he was there when a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on that city. The blast blinded him temporarily, ruptured his eardrums, and inflicted serious burns on his upper body. Nonetheless, Yamaguchi survived. He spent the night in an air raid shelter, then left the devastated Hiroshima the following day and returned home. Unfortunately, home happened to be Nagasaki.
Heavily bandaged, Yamaguchi reported for work on the morning of August 9th. He was in the midst of describing the Hiroshima atomic blast to a supervisor, when a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This time around, Yamaguchi was about two miles from ground zero, so he was not as badly hurt as he had been in Hiroshima. However, between the shock and possible radiation sickness, he ended up vomiting for a week while suffering a high fever. Yamaguchi might have been one of history’s unluckiest individuals, considering that he had an atomic bomb dropped on him – twice. He might also have been one of history’s luckiest individuals, seeing as how he survived having an atomic bomb dropped on him, twice. Either way, Tsutomu Yamaguchi recovered fully and lived until 2010, when he died at the ripe old age of 93.