Hi or should I say ohayōgozaimasu. My name is Kevin Hicks, welcome to my YouTube Channel
the History Squad. Today's film is about the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in Japan August 1945 but included in our film is the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi,
a Japanese gentleman who actually survived both the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
an incredible story indeed. What inspired me to make this little film was a conversation
I had at a family Barbecue with regards to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and we were having a
good old chat about this and then a question was put directly to me uh, what would happen if the
Russians dropped a nuclear bomb on Ukraine. The debate that followed was quite intense but I very
quickly realized that most of the people who were talking had no idea what a nuclear bomb really was
and the devastation it could cause. So I've been doing a little bit of research and one or two of
the things that have popped up have surprised me. So the bombing raid on Hiroshima August 6,
1945 the bomb is released 8:15 a.m rush hour and it explodes 2,000 feet above Hiroshima,
that's an air burst. Now this bomb itself Little Boy was 10 foot long,
imagine the size of that for a bomb, 10 foot long 30 inches across. It's power,
it contained 15 kilotons of TNT and it will destroy four square miles of the city of Hiroshima
the actual target on Hiroshima was the Aioi bridge, but they missed by about 800 feet
and the bomb exploded above the Shima Medical Clinic, they say anything up to 80,000 people
were burned alive, incinerated straight away and the numbers fluctuate as to how many people
died afterwards from sickness and their injuries. I've read one account that it was another 80,000.
Now for 80,000 people to die in Hiroshima just like that, that was 30 percent of the population
and you imagine the disruption. No fire brigade, no medical help, nobody had ever dropped an atomic
bomb before, nobody knew about radiation sickness but this was just the beginning.
So the Americans launched a second raid and dropped a nuclear bomb on August the 9th on the
city of Nagasaki the bomb was called Fat Man, that was their nickname referring allegedly to Winston
Churchill, but this bomb contained 21 kilotons of TNT. Now when it exploded it instantly killed
40,000 people in Nagasaki, half the amount of those in Hiroshima, apparently the reason was
that Nagasaki had an awful lot of rivers and water surrounding it and also within it but
forty thousand dead, instant, devastating. Now as many of you probably know the reason the United
States dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to bring the second world war to a
speedy end, now the decision to drop the second bomb the bomb that landed on Nagasaki was taken on
the 7th of August and the reason behind the second bomb was to send a message to the Japanese we've
got lots of these bombs if need we will bomb Japan out of existence but there's another reason, it
sent a big message to the Soviet Union, hey look what we've got. Now once the message had sunk in,
Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of the Japanese, unconditional surrender, on the 15th of
August and on the 2nd of September the surrender documents were signed in Tokyo Bay on board USS
Missouri presiding over this surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri was General MacArthur and he
made a quite a fantastic speech and the closing words for that speech are “Let us pray that peace
be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.”
Can you imagine being a crew member on Enola Gay on that fateful day when they dropped that bomb
on Hiroshima? Do you know they didn't feel the blast until they'd been flying over 11 miles away
from the scene and when they looked back and they saw that mushroom cloud and the area of
devastation. In fact the co-pilot Captain Robert Lewis, he said “Oh my God, what have we done?”
But that's a kind of a popular picture isn't it the you know Enola Gay flying away and there
might be another airplane filming it well in fact it was six aircraft. You got Enola Gay,
the camera plane, the observation plane and three weather reconnaissance planes as well
as a seventh which was actually on the ground at Iwo Jima which was the reserve Interceptor,
the reserve bomber in case you know Enola Gay broke down. But it's interesting that as they
approached the Japanese mainland, they were picked up by Japanese radar and sirens were sounded
but the civil population, bless them, were just so fed up of raid after raid they basically ignored
the warnings. Little did they know what was about to happen. Incredibly it's said that
a hundred people at least survived both nuclear blasts, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however only one
person was officially recognized after the war by the Japanese government. Tsutomu Yamaguchi,
29 years of age an engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, he designed oil tankers. Now he was
on a three-month secondment to Hiroshima from Nagasaki and on the last day, first thing in the
morning he's making his way to the railway station with his two friends. Now I'm going to read their
names, it's important I get these right. His two friends Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato.
As they’re going to the railway station Yamaguchi realizes oh my goodness I've left
my travel warrant behind so he runs back to the hotel. His two friends continue on. He gets his
travel warrant and as he steps out of the hotel just before 8 15 on that terrible morning he sees
an aircraft, not unusual, but then he notices what he thinks are two parachutes coming down
and then a blinding flash. He was over three kilometers from Ground Zero and yet he lost his
sight temporarily, his eardrums were burst and his upper torso was actually burned, but he did manage
to find his way down into a shelter where he was reunited with his colleagues. The next morning,
I presume his sight is recovered, they were there to witness the sheer devastation
of Hiroshima but ironically they were also able to return to Nagasaki.
So Yamaguchi and his friends have returned home to Nagasaki, come 9th of August he is back at work,
bandaged up, beaten but still working. He's in fact having a meeting with his boss and his boss
is incredulous he does not believe Yamaguchi about his experiences at Hiroshima with the
bomb he says you're a scientist, you shouldn't be leaving such fantasies and then at 11:08 am
there is an air raid warning and they all begin to make their way out of the building down into the
air raid shelter and there is a blinding flash. It is of course the second nuclear explosion.
Yamaguchi survives almost unscathed, he was once again three kilometers from Ground Zero but this
time it would appear the building shielded him somewhat. Interestingly Yamaguchi hardly spoke
about his experiences at Hiroshima and Nagasaki until he was in his 80s, he wrote a book of poems
called a Raft of Corpses and then people realized that he'd been in both of the explosions. He was
a staunch supporter of nuclear disarmament and I'm hardly surprised at that. He appeared at
film premiers about the subject and gave talks on his experiences, he lived until 2010 he was
93 when he died of stomach cancer, his wife had also lived a long life, she died when she was
88. But interestingly his daughter said he only registered as a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing.
He felt that registering for both it would have been disrespectful to those who were not
so fortunate. What an honorable man he must have been. It's amazing when you look at the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki they were incredible, terribly destructive,
but they pale into insignificance when you compare them with today's nuclear weapons that we have. If
you look at Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima that was 15 kilotons of TNT then Fat Man on Nagasaki,
21 kilotons of explosives. But then compare it to today, the United States submarine launched
Trident that missile contained 455 kilotons of TNT and then a Soviet launched a missile
800 kilotons of explosive you know even a 100 kiloton nuclear weapon dropped on New York City,
heaven forbid, could lead easily to over half a million deaths, instantly.
Well that was a bit of doom and gloom wasn't it? I suppose it's a bit hard for me to say I
hope you enjoyed that video, let's say I hope you found this film interesting. If you did,
like, share and subscribe and before I go a quick mention to some of my Patreon members we have Kat,
Joel Belding and John Strawmyre, hey guys thanks a million. Bye for now.