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March 24, 2009
You Think You're Living A Cursed Life?
You, my friend, are a rank amateur compared to Tsutomu Yamaguchi
TOKYO — A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday.Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified "hibakusha," or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said.
Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack, city officials said.
How does one say "Book of Job" in Japanese?
Posted by Mr. Bingley at March 24, 2009 09:17 AM
Comments
This is absurd. Why did it take more than sixty years to figure this out?
Bad luck for him, but I'm not inclined to feel sorry for him. He should have done more to help overthrow his evil government.
Posted by: Skyler at March 24, 2009 09:46 AM
All that, AND he's 93 years old.
Skyler, I daresay that there weren't a lot of redundant records sitting around on computer servers in Imperial Japan. It was all paper back then. The records probably didn't survive the blast wave and the fires.
Posted by: nightfly at March 24, 2009 10:04 AM
IIRC, a farmer moved after part of the battle of Bull Run took place on his farm, only to lend his new house to Grant to accept Lee's surrender.
Posted by: Retread at March 24, 2009 11:55 AM
Nightie, with the obsession that the Japanese have had for these bombings there's no reason someone couldn't have cleared this up sooner. If you remember back to the 80's when Reagan was president and all the world seemed to think we were about to destroy the entire planet with nuclear weapons, the Japanese were at the forefront of the no-nukes movement.
If there were people around to vouch for his story when he was 93, then there were certainly people around the past six decades.
Posted by: Skyler at March 24, 2009 02:34 PM
Yeah, it does seem rather odd, Skyler.
Posted by: Mr. Bingley at March 24, 2009 03:14 PM
My (very) brief excursions with Japanese bureaucracy says this is NOT odd. Without going into detail, There Is A Procedure For Every Thing. Do Not Transgress.
Add in the very real denialism of the Japanese when it comes to their actions and defeat in World War II, and I am not surprised at all by this delay. Thinking outside the box in Japanese appears to be a rare skill.
It's stupid that this recognition took so long, but not surprising.
Posted by: JeffS at March 24, 2009 05:24 PM
To paraphrase Wilde, 'Once looks like an accident. Twice looks like carelessness.'
Posted by: TimT at March 24, 2009 07:20 PM
It doesn't say in the story, but possibly he never tried to get certified for both until recently. Or possibly his children or grandchildren decided to pursue it. Hard to say... it is a "news story" so lots of stuff gets left out in the overall picture of him surviving both blasts. To the news people that's the only important point.
Posted by: Teresa at March 24, 2009 11:39 PM
Well, I read accounts when I was in grade school about double survivors, I'll have to look it up, but I don't think he's the only one. The problem is that many left Hiroshima for Nagasaki to be with relatives, but had no papers to prove they left or where they went, and I think a lot of them died before getting registered sounded like a good idea. They just wanted to forget and move on in the 50s and 60s - being a double survivor could even have been a stigma.
Posted by: John at March 25, 2009 11:41 AM
Well, I read accounts when I was in grade school about double survivors, I'll have to look it up, but I don't think he's the only one. The problem is that many left Hiroshima for Nagasaki to be with relatives, but had no papers to prove they left or where they went, and I think a lot of them died before getting registered sounded like a good idea. They just wanted to forget and move on in the 50s and 60s - being a double survivor could even have been a stigma.
Posted by: John at March 25, 2009 11:41 AM
There's a saying in Japan: The nail that stands up gets hammered down. Japanese, especially the older generation, don't draw attention to themselves.
Posted by: RebeccaH at March 25, 2009 02:15 PM