The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

One of the Luckiest Unlucky People in the World: Tsutomu Yamaguchi

From the March 23, 2021, ListVerse "Top 10 Luckiest Unlucky People Whose Luck Nearly Killed Them" by Jonathan H. Kantor.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing around 140,000 people in the blast and subsequent radiation.

One man who survived was Tsutomu Yamaguchi who was spending his last day in that city after designing a new tanker in the prior months.  When the bomb detonated, he was lucky enough to jump into a ditch to avoid the full blast.  But the shock wave pulled him into the air, spinning and hurtling him into a nearby potato patch.  He was less than two miles from Ground Zero.

His ear drums were nearly ruptured and his face and fore arms severely burned, but he survived.

Next, he made his way to a train and left for his hometown.  Unfortunately for him, that hometown was named Nagasaki.  Upon arriving, he was able to get into a hospital.  On August 9, he was recounting his ordeal to a Mitsubishi company director when there was a flash of light outside and he leapt to the ground once more.

Miraculously, though still injured from the first blast, Yamaguchi survived the second.

He later recalled the Nagasaki blast saying, "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima."

A Real Lucky Guy.  --GreGen


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