Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer.
The cancer part perhaps isn't surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person
officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings
of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What is surprising, given that history, is that Yamaguchi avoided the disease for so
long, not dying until January 4, 2010, at the age of 93.
So how did Yamuguchi find himself at both locations during the two respective blasts?
At the age of 29, Yamaguchi was on his way back home from a three month long business
trip to Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
At the time, he was an engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries- specifically, working as
an oil tanker designer.
On his way to the train station to head back to his home in Nagasaki, he noticed he'd forgotten
his travel permit and went back to get it while his colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi
Sato, went on.
He picked up his pass and was on his way back to the station when, at 8:15 a.m., he saw
a bomber flying over the city and "two small parachutes", then a rush of blinding light,
sound, wind, and heat knocked him to the ground.
Mr. Yamaguchi had the misfortune of being approximately 3 km from a nuclear blast.
The immediate effects of this were his ear drums rupturing, temporarily blindness, and
burns over much of his upper body.
After his initial disorientation, and in spite of his injuries, Tsutomu managed to make his
way to an air-raid shelter where he met up with his two colleagues who had also survived
the blast.
He spent the night in the shelter and in the morning he and his co-workers headed back
to Nagasaki via train as originally planned.
When he arrived, he received bandage treatments from a local hospital, and even felt well
enough to report for work on August the 9th, just 3 days later...
(Think about that next time you have to take a week off from getting a cold…)
Of course, Yamaguchi had to explain his burns to his coworkers.
His boss was in disbelief over his claim that it was a single explosion that destroyed much
of Hiroshima.
"You're an engineer," he said to Tsutomu, "calculate it…how could one bomb destroy
an entire city?"
The boss spoke too soon.
According to Yamaguchi, during this conversation the air-raid sirens went off and then, once
again, he saw a blinding white light.
He dropped to the floor immediately; he was familiar with the drill.
Yamaguchi stated, "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima."
Both bombs exploded near the city centers and both, interestingly enough, were just
about 3 kilometers away from Tsutomu's position at the time.
Despite this explosion being slightly more powerful than the one at Hiroshima (21 kilotons
vs. 16 kilotons at Hiroshima), thanks to the city's uneven terrain and the fact that many
parts of the city were divided by water, which prevented the extensive fire damage that happened
in Hiroshima, there wasn't nearly the amount of overall infrastructure damage.
Yamaguchi himself experienced no immediate injury from this second explosion, though
of course was exposed to another high dose of ionizing radiation and medical supplies
to treat his existing burns were now in short supply.
Interestingly, Yamaguchi almost didn't have to go through this ordeal twice.
Nagasaki was not the original target for the second nuke- that was the city of Kokura.
However, thanks to a cloud covering Kokura when the bomber arrived, they had to divert
to a secondary target, Nagasaki, as the mission stipulated that they were not to drop the
bomb unless they had a visual of the target.
When the bomber arrived at Nagasaki, they also found significant cloud cover, but because
they were low on fuel, it was not possible to divert to another target, so they made
their run anyways, despite their orders.
When they got close, just before releasing, they did have a brief visual to confirm their
location before dropping the bomb.
Had they had more fuel or there not been a cloud cover over Kokura, Yamaguchi and a not
insignificant portion of the Japanese population would have had their lives drastically changed,
some for the good and some for the bad.
Surprisingly, unlike so many others who experienced even just one of the blasts, Yamaguchi went
on to live a long and productive life with the only major permanent physical health problem
as the result of the bombings being the loss of hearing in his left ear, though the burns
took some time to heal; he temporarily lost all his hair; and he experienced a great deal
of psychological trauma, as one might expect.
He and his wife, Hisako, even went on to have children, who all turned out perfectly healthy,
which at least at the time, not so much today, was thought to be something of a miracle considering
both parents had been exposed to such high levels of ionizing radiation.
Yamaguchi's wife lived to 88, dying of kidney and liver cancer.
Yamaguchi himself lived to the ripe old age of 93 years old and for most of his life made
little mention of the fact that he'd been present at both bombings.
He initially just registered as a survivor of Nagasaki.
According to one of his daughters, his reasoning for downplaying this, and not registering
as a survivor of Hiroshima as well, was his robust health through most of his life.
He felt it would be disrespectful to the many thousands who were not so lucky, health-wise.
Once in his 80's, he changed his stance, breaking his silence on the matter and officially applying
for recognition as a survivor of both blasts, which was granted by the Japanese government
in 2009, shortly before his death.
He then dedicated the rest of his life to campaigning for the disarmament of nuclear
weapons from all nations.
He even wrote a book outlining his experience, which included many poems he wrote about the
event (Raft of Corpses).
Despite it all, Yamaguchi considered himself lucky.
As he said shortly before his death, "I could have died on either of those days.
Everything that follows
is
a bonus."
Bonus Fact: Ever wonder why nuclear bombs create a mushroom
shaped cloud?
Well, wonder no more.
This phenomenon all comes down to a little something called the Rayleigh-Taylor instability,
and by extension, convection.
It all starts with an explosion that creates a Pyrocumulus Cloud.
This ball of burning hot gases is accelerated outwardly in all directions.
Since the burning ball of accelerated gases is hotter, and therefore less dense, than
the surrounding air, it will begin to rise- in the case of nuclear explosions, extremely
rapidly.
This ultimately forms the mushroom cap.
As the ball rises, it will leave behind air that is heated, creating a chimney-like effect
that draws in any smoke and gases on the outer edge of the chimney- convection in action!
Visually, this forms the stipe (stalk) of the mushroom.
The perception that the mushroom cap is curling down and around the stipe is primarily a result
of the differences in temperature at the center of the cap and its outside.
The center is hotter and therefore will rise faster, leaving the slower outer edges to
be caught up in the stipe convection’s awesome attributes.
Once that cloud reaches a certain point in our atmosphere, where the density of the gas
cloud is the same as the density of the surrounding air, it will spread out, creating a nice cap.
This brings me to the shorter, yet more geeky answer.
This entire process is something that describes the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
This instability is well known in physics and, in general, describes the merging between
two different substances (mainly liquids and gases) that have different densities and are
subjected to acceleration.
In the case of an atomic bomb, the acceleration and the hotter gases creating the differing
densities of material are caused by the explosion.
From this, you might have guessed you don't necessarily need an atomic bomb to create
a mushroom cloud.
All you need is enough energy delivered rapidly (in this case an explosion) that creates a
pocket of differing densities of material (in this case, heated gases).
There are numerous other examples in our world that create, and are described by, the same
phenomenon that gives us this formation.
For instance, the magnetic fields of planets, the jet-stream of winds that help control
our planet's climate, the sound of snapping shrimp, even our understanding of certain
different forms of fusion can all be attributed to Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
Now, you might have also noticed that nuclear explosions, besides producing this frightening
fungal formation, also sometimes result in a cloud ring around the mushroom cap.
What's going on here is that a low pressure area is created via the negative phase of
the shockwave (the phase that follows the wave of compressed gases at the leading part
of the shock wave).
This results in a drop in temperature, which along with the low pressure can potentially
lower the dew point sufficiently for a temporary cloud to form.
This cloud halo around the explosion is known as a "Wilson Cloud", named after Scottish
physicist Charles Wilson who invented the Wilson Cloud Chamber where similar sorts of
things can be observed.
Bonus Fact 2: The bomb that hit Nagasaki was called "Fat Man", many claim named after Winston
Churchill.
This claim has been debunked by none other than the namer of the bomb, physicist Robert
Serber, who stated he named "Fat Man" such simply because of its shape.
Serber also named "Little Boy", the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.