A Business Trip That Changed Everything
On 6 August 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a marine engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was finishing a three-month assignment in Hiroshima. As he walked toward the docks, he saw a B-29 bomber and two parachutes before a flash and blast threw him to the ground.
Just 3 km from the epicenter, he suffered ruptured eardrums, temporary blindness, and severe burns on his upper left body. After finding his colleagues, the group sheltered overnight before returning to Yamaguchi’s home city of Nagasaki the next day.
Back to Work and a Second Blast
Despite heavy bandaging, Yamaguchi reported for work in Nagasaki on 9 August. At 11:00 a.m., while explaining Hiroshima’s destruction to his supervisor, another B-29 appeared.
The “Fat Man” bomb detonated over the city—again with Yamaguchi about 3 km from ground zero. Though uninjured by the second explosion, he suffered fever and vomiting for a week, unable to change his destroyed bandages.
Life After the Bombings
In the postwar years, Yamaguchi worked as a translator for the Allied occupation before returning to ship design at Mitsubishi. He and his wife Hisako, herself a Nagasaki bombing survivor, had three children, all of whom reported lifelong health issues they attributed to their parents’ radiation exposure.
Yamaguchi lost hearing in one ear, temporarily went bald, and later developed cataracts, leukemia, and, in 2009, stomach cancer.
Recognition and Final Years
Yamaguchi was officially recognized as a Nagasaki hibakusha in 1957 but did not seek acknowledgment for Hiroshima until 2009.
That March, the government confirmed him as the only person officially recognized as surviving both bombings. In his later years, he wrote books, appeared in a documentary, and advocated for nuclear disarmament. He met director James Cameron weeks before his death in Nagasaki on 4 January 2010, aged 93.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only person officially recognized as surviving both atomic bombings.
His ordeal began in Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and continued in Nagasaki three days later, placing him near ground zero twice in less than a week…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/1OUMiw8rGi
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) August 14, 2025