Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Man Who Had 2 Atomic Bombs Dropped On Him - The Tsutomu Yamaguchi story

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

This is the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the man who survived being hit by 2 atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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And right now you can get Disney Plus in Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limit to time offer ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto renews and 1299 a month, terms apply. Imagine you're walking to work one day, and suddenly, kaboom, someone drops an atomic bomb on you. Now, imagine if that happened to you twice. So this guy's name is Satomu. He's 29, he lives in Japan, he's a naval engineer, he designs oil tankerships.

He's a really smart guy. And Satomu's been working out of town for about three months, because he's been designing this new oil tanker. And it's his last day working away from home, and he is ready to leave that city. He just wants to get home so he can be with his wife and son. So anyway, he's walking to work on this final day. And he's already daydreaming about the day being over.

And just as he's reaching the shipyard, suddenly he hears the sound of an airplane buzzing overhead, which isn't that uncommon, but this plane sounds different. So he looks up and he sees this is not a commercial plane. It's a military plane flying over the city. And as he's staring at it, something drops out of the bottom of it. And as this object falls to the ground,

Satomu is watching it, trying to figure out what it is. And that is when suddenly, a crazy bright flash fills the sky, and it blinds him for a moment. And in this split second, Satomu, he's disoriented, but he knows this bright flash is an explosion from a bomb. And light travels faster than sound, so he knows what's coming next.

And he immediately dives to the ground for covered, and he rolls over into a ditch, covering his face with his hands and plugging his ears, just in time to hear a massive kabum. And the force of this blast is so strong. It lifts him off the ground and flips him into the air, spinning him like a tornado. And then bam, he slams to the ground.

And he is out. And when he regains consciousness, everything is dark, and his ears are ringing. And he immediately thinks, oh, shit, I'm dead. And it takes him a moment to realize he's not. He's alive. And he's lying in a potato patch.

And he stands up and he can barely see. see through all the thick falling ash around him, but off in the distance he sees there's a huge mushroom cloud of fire rising into the sky, because Sotomu is in Hiroshima when it was hit by the world's first atomic bomb attack. And so he looks at himself and his face and his arms are all badly burned and his eardrums are ruptured and everything just hurts. So he stumbles through the falling ash with very little visibility and he makes his way to what is left of the shipyard where he works. And there he finds two of his coworkers. And they're both also covered in ash and they're both also badly burned. So the three of them look at each other and they're like,

what do we do now? Now here's the thing. Japan is in the middle of World War II right now. And local governments and citizens, they had been constructing air raid shelters all around the country to protect people in the event of bombs being dropped. So the whole country has been prepared for war. So the three men, they look all around and they find one of the these air raid shelters. And they go there. And they're inside the shelter and they're all huddled up with some other survivors. And it's there that they hear their first bit of promising news. Somehow, one of the local train stations is still operating. And the trains are still running. So the three guys crash in that shelter for the night. And the next morning, Satomu is like,

hey, I need to get back home to my wife and kid. Now, unfortunately, his wife and kid are in another city many hours away by train. So Satomu and his coworkers, they all three set out on foot, determined to make it to this train station. And they walk all through the city, or what's left of it, and it is an apocalyptic hellscape. Everything is either covered in ash or just straight up on fire. And most of the buildings are just completely decimated, but the absolute worst part is that the streets are littered with charred and melted corpses. So eventually, the three men they get to a bridge. And they need to cross this bridge to get to the train station. But of course, this bridge is no longer standing. I mean, at this point, it's just a pile of wreckage.

But Satomu and the other two, they can't stop now. I mean, they've already gone this far. So they decide they have to wade into the river and swim across. But this river is filled with a layer of floating dead people. So they swim through it. And then finally they reach the train station. And Satomu, he gets on a train to go back home. And this train is packed with other people badly burned who had also survived the bomb. And this is an overnight trip. So the next morning, the train arrives at his stop. And Satomu, he gets off and he goes straight to the hospital.

And the blackened burns on his face and his hands are so severe that his doctor doesn't even recognize him. But he gets treatment, they bandage him all up, and he heads home to see his wife and son. And when he gets home, he's all burnt up and bandaged up, and his family doesn't recognize him either. Regardless, he's with his family, and he's alive, and he's safe. Until. The next morning, Satomu wakes up, and he's a man who is dedicated to his job,

because even though he's severely injured and mentally traumatized, he gets ready, and he heads off to work at the home office in his city. And as soon as he gets to work, and his boss sees him all bandaged up, His boss is like, what the hell happened to you? I mean, Boss had kind of heard there was an attack on Hiroshima, but he doesn't believe Satomu would have survived that. So Boss pulls him aside into a conference room,

and he's like, all right buddy, tell me what the hell really happened. And Satomu, he starts telling the story, like, yeah, they dropped a bomb on me back in Hiroshima. It was crazy. And of course, boss is like, what? There is no way one bomb could destroy an entire city. And, uh, famous last words, because at that very very, very moment, pow, a crazy bright flash fills the sky. The exact same flash Satomu saw before. And it blinds him for a moment, but he's been through this, and he knows what's coming this time,

and he immediately dives directly to the floor. And then a massive kabboon! And all the windows in the office shatter, and there's debris and glass everywhere. And everything in the office is destroyed and blown over. And when Satomu comes to, all of his bandages have been blown off. and everything around him is complete chaos. A second atomic bomb had just been dropped. And people are panicking and screaming and the whole city had just been destroyed. And even the building he's in is now mostly a skeleton.

And so Satomu, he checks himself. And strangely, he's not any more injured than he already was. And he's relieved because he just survived two atomic bomb blasts. One in Hiroshima and another one three days later. later in Nagasaki. What are the f***ing odds? But then he remembers his wife and son back home. Like, oh shit, did the bomb get them? Are they hurt? So Satomu, he runs out of the building, or what's left of it, and he runs as fast as he can through the falling ash, and he's dodging fires left and right, trying to get home. And soon enough, he arrives there at his house.

But unfortunately, his home is no longer home, because the whole thing has been reduced to just a pile of rubble. he is devastated. How could this be? What the hell happened to his wife and kid? All right. So here's what happened. Shortly just before the bomb dropped, wife decides, you know, Satomu is burned up really bad. I'm going to go to the store and get some ointment for when he gets home from work. So she takes the sun and she goes to the store. And that is when Kaboom, the bomb drops. But luckily, the store is much further away from the blast than the house was, so wife and son end up only having minor injuries. But if you think about it, if Sotomu hadn't been injured in that first bomb, then his family may have never gone to the store. And they

probably would have died in that second bomb. That's crazy. But anyway, so Sotomu does, of course, have radiation poisoning, but he does survive and he eventually goes on to become a public speaker, speaking out against the use of atomic weapons. And he actually lived a long life after that. He lived be 93. And then, sadly, he died of cancer, likely related to being in two atomic bomb blasts.