75 years since ‘the flash:’ Two stories of miracle and regained hope

Harsha Rao, Aug 9, 2021, 10:47 AM IST

The Double Miracle

29-year-old naval engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on the last day of his work assignment on August 6, 1945. He and his colleagues had been working for three months on a new design for an oil tanker ship at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Hiroshima.

While Yamaguchi was finishing some final works in the shipyard, a little after 8 am in the morning of that fateful day, the bomb exploded.

He jumped into a ditch before the massive boom sound of the blast ruptured his eardrums and burned his face and forearms.

Minutes after the blast he had lost consciousness and after he woke up he and his colleagues spent the night at an air raid shelter near the shipyard.

On the morning of August 7, they received news that the railways was surprisingly operational and was carrying anybody wanting to leave the city.

Yamaguchi and his colleagues made their way to the train station after passing through the streets of the completely razed city, charred corpses and in one instance even crossing a river floating with dead bodies.

At the train station, he saw most of what was left of the human population of the city bewildered and wanting to leave.

Yamaguchi was a little more than three kilometres from the explosion’s centre and had miraculously survived it along with the others at the train station.

But another miracle was waiting for him.

He got on a train and settled for the overnight ride to somehow reach his wife and baby in his hometown – Nagasaki.

On reaching his home on the morning of August 8, no one from his family recognised him.

Even when he visited the local hospital in Nagasaki, his childhood friend, who was the physician in the hospital and was treating him, also did not recognise him.

Despite having a fever and the bandaged severe burns, Yamaguchi went to Mitsubishi’s Nagasaki office on August 9.

His superiors asked him for a report about Hiroshima and after listening to his series of events – the flash, deafening boom etc.- they called him mad and refused to believe his story.

They all completely disbelieved one aspect of Yamaguchi’s report – how could a bomb destroy an entire city?

While Yamaguchi was trying to explain further about the unbelievable incident at Hiroshima, another flash shook entire Nagasaki.

Yamaguchi felt he is cursed and the flashes are following him.

He had, however, enough time to fall to the ground and save himself from the flying glass and other debris.

The nuclear bomb that was exploded over Nagasaki was even more powerful than the one at Hiroshima. However, Yamaguchi survived, again, due to the reinforced stairs of his office building and the hilly terrain of the city that muffled the blast impact of the bomb.

He soon rushed from the mostly bombed-out office building to check whether his wife and baby are safe.

When he reached his home he saw a part of his house in rubble and his wife and baby had sustained only minor injuries.

Both of them were not in the house when the bomb exploded. His wife had taken the baby out with her to get medicines and ointment for her husband.

After the explosion, she ran to a nearby tunnel saving herself and their baby.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi and his family survived the first and only use of nuclear weapons through some strange twist of fate.

The Hope Bringer

Teruko Ueno was fifteen in 1945 and was studying to be a nurse at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.

After the bomb exploded over the city, she saw the students’ dormitory at the hospital catch fire and many of her classmates burn to death.

She was scarred for life right at that moment.

For weeks after the explosion, she was working day and night without much food and water, in treating the burn victims and their injuries.

She worked at the hospital for years after finishing her nursing course, treating the bomb’s victims and assisting in skin grafting procedures of many of them.

Teruko married another survivor and when she became pregnant she started experiencing double mental trauma: the explosion and the health of her child yet to come into her scarred world.

Teruko gave birth to her daughter Tomoko who was fully healthy and that changed everything for her.

She became confident about her life and her family as over the following years, along with them, Hiroshima, marked as uninhabitable for the next fifty years, also thrived.

The city’s green cover and rivers revived sooner than anyone could imagine.

Teruko has remained committed to the cause of nuclear disarmament since so that no one ever again has to see a dormitory and a city become engulfed in a fire.