The Luckiest or Unluckiest Man in the World? (Double A-bomb survival)

[BagOfCrisps 24]

I found this to be very interesting and thought I would share.

 

A very thought provoking and touching story. Definitely worth a read.

 

Quote:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato are either the luckiest or the unluckiest men alive, and after three days in their company and long hours of conversation, I still had no idea which. It is sixty years since their monstrous ordeal and all three are well into their ninth decade. Mr Sato, who is 86, uses a wheelchair after injuring his back, and 89-year old Mr Yamaguchi is almost deaf in one ear. But all of them exude the dignified vigour of elderly Japanese, the world’s healthiest and longest living race. “I was a heavy smoker,†Mr Yamaguchi told me during our first meeting, “but I gave up smoking and drinking when I was 50. I didn’t expect to live to 80. And now I’m well over 80.†The miracle is not that he is alive now, but that he made it past the age of 29.

 

Mr Yamaguchi and his friends are freaks of history, victims of a fate so callous and improbable that it almost raises a smile. In 1945, they were working in Hiroshima where the world’s first atomic bomb exploded 60 years ago this morning, on 6 August 1945. 140,000 people died as a result of the explosion; by pure chance, Mr Yamaguchi, Mr Sato and Mr Iwanaga, were spared. Stunned and injured, reeling from the horrors around them, they left the city for the only place they could have gone – their home town, Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west. There, on 9th August, the second atomic bomb exploded over their heads......

 

In a century of mass killing, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of a new age. The end of the world was transformed from an imaginative notion, the fancy of poets and prophets, into a real and living possibility. Three men survived the beginning of the end of the world, not once, but twice. Sixty years later, all three of them are alive.

 

http://timesonline.typepad.com/times_tokyo_weblog/2009/03/the-luckiest-or.html

 

 

 

 

[Yuki's Passion 1]

thank you so much for putting that up - Ill use that in my class later 2nd semester. Cheers!

[Jynxx 4]

Amazing story....

Cheers Bags!

[bobby12 0]

He might make it 3 if North Korea carry on like they are.

[muikabochi 208]

Very interesting that.

[Roger's head 0]

Incredible that they experienced both of those.

This almost applies

What a story.

[thursday 1]

I would say very fortunate. And very worthwhile lives.

[grungy-gonads 54]

Without a doubt.

And to still be living genki at 89.....

[HelperElfMissy 42]

My word....they certainly are in a select little club arent they?

 

I find it incedible that ANYONE survived the catastrophic after effects of any one of those incidents, let alone 3 men surviving BOTH and still being alive today. So many people died as a result of the fallout and residual radiation - and they are still going strong.

 

They must have had something very special to bring to world

[stemik 14]

interesting read!

[foreversnow 5]

Thank you for posting this article it is truly an amazing story.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

wow....thats an amazing story

[Nisoko 6]

Wow. Great article.

[thursday 1]

don't drop, drop once, drop twice

[Weegeoff 0]

Aren,t they lucky that the Americans only built TWO bombs

[BagOfCrisps 24]

Glad you liked it. Didn't take me long to write....

[ShinyDiscoBall 2]

Bit late arriving on this but great read.

 

Are you going to use that Creek Boy? (Students must be pretty advanced!)

[big-will 7]

BBC "causes outrage in Japan"

 

Quote:

The BBC is at the centre of a diplomatic row after the Japanese Embassy protested about an episode of comedy quiz show QI.

 

Tokyo says the show, hosted by Stephen Fry, insulted a man who survived both of the atomic bomb strikes that ended the Second World War.

 

Panellists and the studio audience were seen laughing and joking about the experience of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who was described on the programme as ‘The Unluckiest Man in the World’.

 

The corporation has been described as insensitive over the broadcast, while the man’s family said they could not forgive the show.

 

The businessman was the only person who has been recognised by the Japanese government as having survived both the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and that of Nagasaki three days later. As many as 200,000 Japanese are said to have died in the bombings.

 

On the episode of QI, which was first broadcast shortly before Christmas, comedians such as Alan Davies and Rob Brydon were seen joking about his story. Davies, when asked to work out what the man’s link to the nuclear attack was, suggested the ‘bomb landed on him and bounced off’.

 

When Fry asked whether the man had been lucky or unlucky, Brydon said: ‘Is the glass half-empty, is it half-full? Either way it’s radioactive. So don’t drink it.’

 

Davies chipped in: ‘He never got the train again, I tell you.’

But the jokes were too much for some Japanese viewers. One contacted diplomatic staff in London while others are understood to have emailed the show. Embassy officials reviewed the footage and sent a protest letter to both the BBC and producers Talkback Thames.

 

A source at the embassy said that while it recognised that much of the banter was about the British rail service in comparison to the fact that Japan’s trains kept running after the first attack, it had still been inappropriate and insensitive in the way it had treated Mr Yamaguchi’s experiences.

 

The source said the embassy’s letter had pointed out that the atomic bombs were ‘seared into the Japanese psyche’.

Mr Yamaguchi’s daughter Toshiko Yamasaki, 62, said she could not forgive the show ‘as it looked down on my father’s experience’.

 

A QI producer said ‘we greatly regret it when we cause offence’ and admitted he ‘underestimated the potential sensitivity of this issue to Japanese viewers’.

 

[Tubby Beaver 209]

they don't really make fun of him and he WAS the Unluckiest/Luckiest man alive

[RobBright 35]

It's a bit of comedy.

[grungy-gonads 54]

Daily Mail doesn't get 'comedy'.

[big-will 7]

Good book I read recently

 

Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima.