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The Real Robinson Crusoe, and Other Fascinating Historic Survival Accounts

Khalid Elhassan June 16, 2024 26 min

Survival - The Marooning Of Alexander Selkirk. Survival And Buschcraft

This Man Had a Terrible Week

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

Heavily bandaged, Yamaguchi reported for work on the morning of August 9^th. He 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 vomiting for a week while suffering a high fever. Yamaguchi might have been one of history’s unluckiest individuals, considering that he 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.