Page 84 - All About History - Issue 08-14

History's narrowest escapes

n a clear, sunny morning on 6 August 1945, thanks to the effects of radiation, and 69 per cent Yamaguchi’s office, hurling him to the ground.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was making his way of the city’s buildings were flattened. Yet Japan Again he was only about three kilometres
along a track through some potato fields did not surrender. For the young engineer it might (two miles) from the epicentre and although his
when he heard the faint noise of an aircraft have been the end of the story – except that his bandages were torn off, he was otherwise unhurt,
O in the sky above. A naval draftsman, he home city was called Nagasaki. After being treated thanks partly to the protection of a nearby steel
had just got off a tram and was walking towards at a hospital there, Yamaguchi reported to his head stairwell. Yamaguchi got out through a window
his workplace, a shipyard in the Japanese city of office for work on 9 August. and made his way through the ruined streets to
Hiroshima, where he had been working as part of At work he was telling his boss what had his home. It had been destroyed but his family
a three-month posting. The job was finally coming happened in Hiroshima when there was another were safe. Around 70,000 other people weren’t so
to an end and Yamaguchi was looking forward to blinding flash. A second atomic weapon, this time lucky and died in the attack and just a few days
getting back to his wife and baby son waiting at a 25-kiloton plutonium bomb dubbed ‘Fat Man’, later Japan surrendered. Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived
their home, which was some 420 kilometres (260 had been dropped. The resulting blast shattered to be 93.
miles) away.
At the sound of the plane, the 29-year-old “ Yamaguchi was suddenly blinded by what
looked up and saw a tiny object fall out. The plane
was a US B-29 bomber called Enola Gay. Its crew he later described as a 'great white flash in
was tasked with dropping the first atomic weapon
ever to be used in war and the object Yamaguchi the sky' accompanied by a deafening roar”
had seen was a 13-kiloton uranium bomb. 43
seconds later, at just under 600 metres (2,000feet)
above the city, it detonated.
Down below, Yamaguchi was suddenly blinded
by what he later described as a ‘great white flash in
the sky’ accompanied by a deafening roar. Trying
to dive down, as he had been trained to do, he was
instead sucked up into the air, then violently flung
down to the ground. A few moments later he came
to, lying in the mud. At first, as he opened his
eyes, he could see little. Slowly, as the dust began
to clear, he could make out the singed leaves of
the potato plants. Then he saw a huge mushroom
cloud rising into the now dark and menacing sky.
Then the pain hit him, a searing heat on the left
side of his face and down his arms. Yamaguchi
made his way to an air-raid shelter 180 metres
(600 feet) away. There he was told he had been
badly burned. His left eardrum had also been
ruptured and his hair completely burned off.
Two hours later, he decided there was no
point in lingering and stepped outside once
more, making for the shipyard. Then, with two
colleagues, he attempted to return to his lodgings
in the city and get his possessions. In the centre
of Hiroshima, the trio encountered a scene of total
devastation. Those who weren’t dead were limping
or walking in a state of utter bewilderment, many
stripped of their clothes, others with skin hanging
off them. That night the three co-workers huddled
together in an air-raid shelter, listening to the
moaning of the dying all around them. At dawn
they made their way to the train station where,
incredibly, the railway was still operating and
boarded the first train headed west.
Yamaguchi had been 3.2 kilometres (two
miles) from the epicentre of the Hiroshima blast.
Those nearer were not as fortunate. Some 78,000
The nuclear bombs dropped on Japan ended WWII but
had been killed by the immediate effects of the caused great loss of life and led to questions of morality
explosion. The death toll would soon hit 140,000,
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