Fiction in reality: See How This Man Survived Two Atomic Bomb Detonation
- A good number of indigenes survived this detonation that once saw the end of a large area of Japan in the year 1945 killing over 140,000 people during the second world war, Tsutomu Yamaguchi an engineer was one of the few people that perdured amidst the horror of both blasts and was still alive to tell the end of it.
He wasn’t born with a thick skin that could repulse radiation neither was his body design like a bomb shelter he didn’t pose any superhero ability aside from being a 29-year-old Naval engineer, nothing else was exciting about him, his ordeal was put in place.
After the idea of a 3 months trip was initiated for him by his superior he resided in Nagasaki but was to vacate his abode and venture over to Hiroshima where he would continue his business project under Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, the date of his return from Hiroshima was due to be August 6, 1945.
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He was a hard-working employee and like every other hard-working person, Tsutomo and his colleagues always ran down the clock each day, working on a design for a new oil tanker.
He was elated with the fact that his workload was reduced significantly and the idea of returning home to his wife Hisako and infant son Katsutoshi kept on creeping into his mind and amplifying that feeling of ecstasy.
The morning of the atomic detonation Tsutomo was found making his way back to the Mitsubishi shipyard for the last time to tidy up his 3 month project and round up, that was his initial plan at first, but everything became disrupted and misplaced when the sound of an American B-29 bomber soar was heard, just to be certain.
Tsutomo looked up to the sky and his suspicions were affirmed as it was indeed a U.S bomber plan, he did that just in time to spot a silver object connected to a parachute and dropped from a high altitude. The sky was pierced by a blinding light, the detonated genocide bomb illuminated the sky “the lightning of a huge magnesium flare” was what Tsutomo as of that time addressed the bomb that was detonated at everyone’s blind spot.
Tsutomo being more aware then everyone else having an ample amount of time at his disposal thrust him into a trench for safety, between a split second of taking that action an ear-bleeding sound covered the area and the shock wave lifted Tsutomo from the ground and sent him flying halfway across the environ into a nearby potato stand, he’d been few miles away from ground zero.
Tsutomo confessed himself that after that very event he was dumbfounded and unaware of the happenings he revealed this to the British newspaper “the times” on how he fainted and when he woke up he was greeted by intense darkness, “like the beginning of a cinema movie”.the debris arose by the explosion could very much blot out the eye of the sky, Tsutomo stood up with a badly burnt arm and face, a ruptured eardrum, and his deem eyes quickly caught the sight of a large mushroom cloud of fire hovering over ground zero in Hiroshima.
Tsutomo with his disfigured body and a deaden mind wandered towards a decimated structure that could only be remembered as the remains of the Mitsubishi shipyard he once worked at, he found a couple of his co-workers(Akira Iwanaga, Kuniyoshi Sato) they were also survivals of the blast.
Subsequently, the trio spent their night in an air-raid shelter, as restless as it was the had no option than to fight through the night and have some rest, they met on the 7 of August and made their way towards a train station, it was a wonder how the station was still in place.
This expenditure they embarked on exposed a deplorable landscape, containing pieces of shattered building materials still burning with flames, a vast sea of flesh and melted corpse bearing a repulsive image was what littered the ground, Tsutomo forcefully crossed a river polluted with more dead bodies and floating corpse, on reaching the station he boarded a train already occupied by several burnt and maimed passengers, and his next destination was his home.
He arrived at Nagasaki on the 8th of August and dragged himself to the hospital, the doctor who attended to him was a former classmate but the blackened smear and wounds he sustained on his face and arm, distorted the Image the doctor saw, making it very difficult to recognize Tsutomo, even his family found it difficult to recognize him, his return home was warmly greeted by accusations as his mother pronounced him a ghost.
Amidst collapsing Tsutomo pulled himself out of bed the next day being August 9, he managed to present himself at the Mitshubishi company situated in Nagasaki, he met the morning meeting around 11 and the Company director inquired for a full-scale report on the Shipyard in Hiroshima.
The engineer narrated what went down without leaving aside the tragic event that stormed Hiroshima on the 6th of August, it sounded absurd he was accused of being demented, as they believed it was seemingly impossible for a single bomb explosion to level a large landscape as that of Hiroshima.
Tsutomo was trying to express himself further and narrow the explanation of such bizarre incident to everyone’s understanding when he was interrupted by an outburst of an explosion, he dropped seconds before the shock wave ravaged through the building shattering the windows and sending everything flying around.
The second round of explosion that happened in japan landed a powerful punch on Nagasaki and left more dire effects than that of Hiroshima, his bandages were blown off and so was his mind as he wondered if the mushroom cloud in Hiroshima followed him home.
He was hit by a large amount of radiation that could fry him on the spot but yet he emerged scatheless, in a single month he was very unfortunate to be a victim of two genocide attacks in just 3 days, but luck was on his side as he was fortunate enough to survive both.
After taking to his heels in a bid to evacuate the atomized Mitsubishi building, Tsutomo rushed through the levelled city in search of his wife and son, he feared for the worst had happened after he came across an unstable structure in which a large portion of it was deleted that very structure was what he affirmed to be his house.
He was later relieved when he saw his wife and kid who sustained only minor injuries, his return to Hiroshima earlier sent his wife out looking for burn ointment for her husband, that alone prevented her and her son from taking an indefinite trip to the morgue, she took refuge in the safety of a tunnel when the explosion reduced their city and her abode.
The days that followed Tsutomo’s ordeal and miraculous survival of a double dose of detonation and radiation he was exposed to started taking effects on his body as his hair didn’t see reason’s to stay on his head again his wounds became malignant and vomiting became something he did constantly.
He was still recuperating after days of languishing in a bomb shelter with his family, August 15th was the day Japan’s emperor announced the country’s surrender, it was transmitted via radio broadcast, he believed that attacks of that magnitude would certainly erase Japan.
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Tsutomo unlike some other victims recovered and went on with his life, although haunted by the dark images of the incident that transpired in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He learned to deal with such thoughts by delving into the world of poetry, he served as a translator in the U.S armed forces during the meantime he taught in a school and eventually went on to take his former job as an engineer at Mitsubishi, he had two other children both female in the year 1950.
He never talked about what went occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki not until he released his memoir and became a full-fledged member of the atomic weapon movement, he journeyed to New York and spoke about atomic aegis and Nuclear disarmament before the UN, he felt it was his destiny to discuss such after surviving two atomic bomb blast.
