Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Man Who Had 2 Atomic Bombs Dropped On Him - The Tsutomu Yamaguchi story
Tue, 04 Feb 2025
This is the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the man who survived being hit by 2 atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Who was Tsutomu Yamaguchi and what was his profession?
Imagine you're walking to work one day, and suddenly, kaboom! Someone drops an atomic bomb on you. Now, imagine if that happened to you twice. So this guy's name is Satomu. He's 29, he lives in Japan, he's a naval engineer, he designs oil tanker ships. He's a really smart guy. And Satomu's been working out of town for about three months. Because he's been designing this new oil tanker.
And it's his last day working away from home and he is ready to leave that city. He just wants to get home so he can be with his wife and son. So anyway, he's walking to work on this final day. And he's already daydreaming about the day being over. And just as he's reaching the shipyard, suddenly he hears the sound of an airplane buzzing overhead.
Which isn't that uncommon, but this plane sounds different. So he looks up and he sees this is not a commercial plane. It's a military plane flying over the city. And as he's staring at it, something drops out of the bottom of it. And as this object falls to the ground, Satomu is watching it, trying to figure out what it is. And that is when suddenly, POW!
A crazy bright flash fills the sky, and it blinds him for a moment. And in this split second, Satomu, he's disoriented. But he knows this bright flash is an explosion from a bomb. And light travels faster than sound, so he knows what's coming next. And he immediately dives to the ground for cover.
And he rolls over into a ditch, covering his face with his hands and plugging his ears, just in time to hear a massive kaboom! And the force of this blast is so strong, it lifts him off the ground and flips him into the air, spinning him like a tornado. And then, bam, he slams to the ground. And he is out. And when he regains consciousness, everything is dark. And his ears are ringing.
And he immediately thinks, oh, sh**. I'm dead. And it takes him a moment to realize he's not. He's alive and he's lying in a potato patch. And he stands up and he can barely see through all the thick falling ash around him. But off in the distance, he sees there's a huge mushroom cloud of fire rising into the sky.
Because Satomu is in Hiroshima when it was hit by the world's first atomic bomb attack. And so he looks at himself and his face and his arms are all badly burned and his eardrums are ruptured and everything just hurts. So he stumbles through the falling ash with very little visibility and he makes his way to what is left of the shipyard where he works. And there, he finds two of his coworkers.
And they're both also covered in ash and they're both also badly burned. So the three of them look at each other and they're like, what do we do now? Now here's the thing. Japan is in the middle of World War II right now. And local governments and citizens, they had been constructing air raid shelters all around the country to protect people in the event of bombs being dropped.
So the whole country has been prepared for war. So the three men, they look all around and they find one of these air raid shelters. And they go there. And they're inside the shelter and they're all huddled up with some other survivors. And it's there that they hear their first bit of promising news. Somehow, one of the local train stations is still operating. And the trains are still running.
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