When Tsutomu Yamaguchi died two weeks ago, at 93, he was eulogized as a star-crossed rarity: a man who lived through two atomic blasts, at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki. He was a man with very good luck, or very bad luck. It’s hard to decide.
But Mr. Yamaguchi wasn’t alone. He was one of as many as 165 people who are believed to have survived Hiroshima only to wind up in Nagasaki when that bomb fell three days later. The stories of these double survivors make up part of Charles Pellegrino’s sober and authoritative new book, “The Last Train From Hiroshima.”
The term “ground zero” originated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who survived up-close encounters with these new American bombs did so thanks to sheer, blind good fortune. They were in exactly the right place at the right time, sheltered from the gamma and infrared death rays, and then from the flattening blast, in spots that acted as natural shock cocoons.
The Hiroshima survivors learned invaluable lessons about surviving a nuclear detonation, but they were discouraged from disseminating this knowledge in the immediate aftermath. Japan’s military leaders did not want to spread “bad stories” and “rumors of defeat.” Some of these survivors talked anyway. They surely saved some lives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/books/20garner.html?th&emc=th
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