Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only official survivor of both atomic blasts to hit Japan in World War II, died Monday in Nagasaki, Japan. He was 93.
The cause was stomach cancer, his family said.
Mr. Yamaguchi, as a 29-year-old engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. He was getting off a streetcar when the so-called Little Boy device detonated above the city.
Mr. Yamaguchi said he was less than two miles away from ground zero that day. His eardrums were ruptured, and his upper torso was burned by the blast, which destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed 80,000 people.
Mr. Yamaguchi spent the night in a Hiroshima bomb shelter and returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, the following day, according to interviews he gave over the years. The second bomb, known as Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, killing 70,000 people.
Mr. Yamaguchi was in his Nagasaki office, telling his boss about the Hiroshima blast, when “suddenly the same white light filled the room,” he said in an interview last March with the British newspaper The Independent.
“I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima,” he said.
Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki attack.
Mr. Yamaguchi recovered from his wounds, went to work for the American occupation forces, became a teacher and eventually returned to work at Mitsubishi.
There were believed to have been about 165 twice-bombed people, known as nijyuu hibakusha, although municipal officials in both cities have said that Mr. Yamaguchi was the only person to be officially acknowledged as such.
One of his daughters, Toshiko Yamasaki, who was born in 1948, said her mother had also been “soaked in black rain and was poisoned” by the fallout from the Nagasaki blast. Her mother died in 2008 from kidney and liver cancer. She was 88.
“We think she passed the poison on to us,” Ms. Yamasaki said, noting that her brother died of cancer at 59 and that her sister has been chronically ill throughout her life.
In his later years Mr. Yamaguchi spoke out against atomic weapons, though he had earlier avoided joining antinuclear protests because of the attention he might have attracted, Ms. Yamasaki told The Independent. “He was so healthy, he thought it would have been unfair to people who were really sick,” she added.
Mr. Yamaguchi rarely gave interviews, but he wrote a memoir and was part of a 2006 documentary about the double bombing survivors. He called for the abolition of nuclear weapons at a showing of the documentary, “Niju Hibaku” (“Twice Bombed”), at the United Nations that year.
At a lecture he gave in Nagasaki last June, Mr. Yamaguchi said he had written to President Obama about banning nuclear arms. And he was recently visited by the American film director James Cameron to discuss a film project on atomic bombs, Ms. Yamasaki said.
Mr. Yamaguchi was philosophical about his surviving the blasts. “I could have died on either of those days,” he told The Mainichi Daily News of Japan in August. “Everything that follows is a bonus.”
***********************************************************************Tsutomu Yamaguchi (山口 彊 Yamaguchi Tsutomu) (March 16, 1916 – January 4, 2010) was a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 70 people are known to have been affected by both bombings,[1] he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.[2]
***********************************************************************Tsutomu Yamaguchi (山口 彊 Yamaguchi Tsutomu) (March 16, 1916 – January 4, 2010) was a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 70 people are known to have been affected by both bombings,[1] he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.[2]
Yamaguchi, a resident of Nagasaki, was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15 am, on August 6, 1945. He returned to Nagasaki the following day, and despite his wounds, he returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. That morning, whilst being berated by his supervisor as "crazy" after describing how one bomb had destroyed the city, the Nagasaki bomb detonated.[3] In 1957, he was recognized as a hibakusha (explosion-affected person) of the Nagasaki bombing, but it was not until March 24, 2009, that the government of Japan officially recognized his presence in Hiroshima three days earlier. He died of stomach cancer on January 4, 2010, at the age of 93.
Contents
Early life[edit]
Yamaguchi was born on March 16, 1916. He joined Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in the 1930s and worked as a draftsman designing oil tankers.[4]
Second World War[edit]
Yamaguchi "never thought Japan should start a war". He continued his work with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, but soon Japanese industry began to suffer heavily as resources became scarce and tankers were sunk.[4] As the war ground on, he was so despondent over the state of the country that he considered killing his family with an overdose of sleeping pills in the event that Japan lost.[4]
Hiroshima bombing[edit]
Yamaguchi lived and worked in Nagasaki, but in the summer of 1945, he was in Hiroshima for a three-month-long business trip.[4] On August 6, he was preparing to leave the city with two colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, and was on his way to the station when he realised he had forgotten his hanko (a stamp allowing him to travel), and returned to his workplace to get it.[5][6] At 8:15 am, he was walking towards the docks when the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb near the centre of the city, only 3 km away.[4][7] Yamaguchi recalls seeing the bomber and two small parachutes, before there was "a great flash in the sky, and I was blown over".[6] The explosion ruptured his eardrums, blinded him temporarily, and left him with serious burns over the left side of the top half of his body. After recovering, he crawled to a shelter, and having rested, he set out to find his colleagues.[6] They had also survived and together they spent the night in an air-raid shelter before returning to Nagasaki the following day.[5][6] In Nagasaki, he received treatment for his wounds, and despite being heavily bandaged, he reported for work on August 9.[4][8]
Nagasaki bombing[edit]
At 11 am on August 9, Yamaguchi was describing the blast in Hiroshima to his supervisor, when the American bomber Bockscar dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb over the city. His workplace again put him 3 km from ground zero, but this time he was unhurt by the explosion.[7] However, he was unable to replace his now ruined bandages, and he suffered from a high fever for over a week.[4]
Later life[edit]
During the Allied occupation of Japan, Yamaguchi worked as a translator for the occupation forces. In the early 1950s, he and his wife, who was also a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, had two daughters. He later returned to work for Mitsubishi designing oil tankers.[4] When the Japanese government officially recognized atomic bombing survivors as hibakusha in 1957, Yamaguchi's identification stated only that he had been present at Nagasaki. He was content with this, satisfied that he was relatively healthy, and put the experiences behind him.[7]
As he grew older, his opinions about the use of atomic weapons began to change. In his eighties, he wrote a book about his experiences (Ikasareteiru inochi) as well as a book of poetry ([1]) and was invited to take part in a 2006 documentary about 165 double A-bomb survivors (known as nijū hibakusha in Japan) called Twice Survived: The Doubly Atomic Bombed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was screened at the United Nations.[9] At the screening, he pleaded for the abolition of atomic weapons.[7]
Yamaguchi became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament.[10] He told an interviewer "The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings."[10] Speaking through his daughter during a telephone interview, he said, "I can't understand why the world cannot understand the agony of the nuclear bombs. How can they keep developing these weapons?"[7]
On December 22, 2009, Canadian movie director James Cameron and author Charles Pellegrino met Yamaguchi while he was in a hospital in Nagasaki, and discussed the idea of making a film about nuclear weapons. "I think it's Cameron's and Pellegrino's destiny to make a film about nuclear weapons," Yamaguchi said.[11]
Recognition by government[edit]
At first, Yamaguchi did not feel the need to draw attention to his double survivor status.[7] However, in later life he began to consider his survival as destiny, so in January 2009, he applied for double recognition.[7] This was accepted by the Japanese government in March 2009, making Yamaguchi the only person officially recognised as a survivor of both bombings.[4][7] Speaking of the recognition, he said, "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."[12]
Health[edit]
Yamaguchi lost hearing in his left ear as a result of the Hiroshima explosion. He also went bald temporarily and his daughter recalls that he was constantly swathed in bandages until she reached the age of 12.[7][Note 1] Despite this, Yamaguchi went on to lead a healthy life.[7] Late in his life, he began to suffer from radiation-related ailments, including cataracts and acute leukemia.[13]
His wife also suffered radiation poisoning from black rain after the Nagasaki explosion and died in 2010 (age 93) of kidney and liver cancer. All three of their children reported suffering from health problems they blamed on their parents' exposures,[7][unreliable medical source?] but studies suggest that in general the children of atomic bomb survivors do not have a higher incidence of disease.[14]
Death[edit]
 | Wikinews has related news:Japanese survivor of both Hiroshima & Nagasaki atomic bombings dies, aged 93 |
In 2009, Yamaguchi learned that he was dying of stomach cancer.[7] He died on January 4, 2010, in Nagasaki at the age of 93.[5][15][16][17][18]
BBC controversy[edit]
On December 17, 2010, the BBC featured Yamaguchi in its comedy program QI, referring to him as "The Unluckiest Man in the World".[19]Both Stephen Fry, the host of QI, and celebrity guests drew laughter from the audience in a segment that included examples of black humor such as asking if the bomb had "landed on him and bounced off".[20] A clip from the episode was uploaded by the BBC after the show but was later deleted. A BBC spokesperson told Kyodo News, "We instructed our crew to delete the file since we have already issued a statement that the content was not appropriate".[21]
The episode triggered criticism in Japan. Toshiko Yamasaki, Yamaguchi's daughter, appeared on NHK's national evening news and said: "I cannot forgive the atomic bomb experience being laughed at in Britain, which has nuclear weapons of its own. I think this shows that the horror of atomic bomb is not well enough understood in the world. I feel sad rather than angry".[22][23]
The Japanese Embassy, London wrote to the BBC protesting that the programme insulted the deceased victims of the atomic bomb. It was reported that Piers Fletcher, a producer of the programme, responded to complaints with "we greatly regret it when we cause offence" and "it is apparent to me that I underestimated the potential sensitivity of this issue to Japanese viewers".[24]
On January 22, 2011, the BBC and Talkback Thames jointly issued a statement.[25] In addition to the joint statement, the BBC delivered a letter from Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, to the Japanese Embassy.[26]
No comments:
Post a Comment