Tsutomu Yamaguchi was stepping off a tram in Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" three kilometres away. In an interview with The Guardian in March, he said he remembered hearing the plane but thought nothing of it because planes were common in wartime Japan.
The blast knocked him off his feet and left him temporarily blind and deaf with serious burns on his left side. He spent the night in an air raid shelter and went home to Nagasaki the following day.
According the Guardian interview, on Aug. 9, when he was back at work wrapped in bandages, his boss was expressing disbelief that a single bomb could have destroyed an entire city, when Bockscar dropped "Fat Man." Again, Mr. Yamaguchi was three kilometres away.
He and his wife and son spent the next week in an air raid shelter. His son died of cancer at 59. His wife died at 88 of cancer.
After the war, he was officially recognized as a bombing victim, or hibakusha. Last year, the governments of Nagasaki and Hiroshima officially listed him as a double- hibakusha.
Staff