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Russia’s Rambo and Other Fascinating WWII Figures and Facts

Khalid Elhassan September 16, 2019 55 min

Lydia Litvyak - World War II — Soviet pilot Captain Mariya Dolina, standing in front of her Petlyakov Pe-2 light bomber. Defense Media Network

Tsutomu Yamaguchi. All That Is Interesting

30. WWII’s Luckiest or Unluckiest Man?

The morning of August 6^th, 1945, found Mitsubishi Heavy Industries employee Tsutomu Yamaguchi going about his work while on an out-of-town business trip. Unfortunately, that trip had taken him to Hiroshima, so he was there when an American B-29 dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on that city. The blast blinded him temporarily, ruptured his eardrums, and inflicted serious burns on his upper body. Nonetheless, Yamaguchi survived, and after spending the night in an air raid shelter, he left the devastated Hiroshima the following day and returned home. Unfortunately, home for Tsutomu Yamaguchi happened to be Nagasaki.

Heavily bandaged, he reported for work on the morning of August 9^th, and was in the midst of describing the Hiroshima atomic blast to a supervisor, when a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This time around, Yamaguchi was about two miles from ground zero, so he was not as badly hurt as he had been in Hiroshima. However, between the shock and possible radiation sickness, he ended up throwing up for a week while suffering a high fever. Yamaguchi might have been one of history’s unluckiest individuals, considering that had an atomic bomb dropped on him – twice. He might also have been one of history’s luckiest individuals, seeing as how he survived having an atomic bomb dropped on him, twice. Either way, Tsutomu Yamaguchi recovered fully and lived until 2010, when he died at the ripe old age of 93.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.