In the summer of 1945, 29-year-old naval engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. August 6 was supposed to be his last day in the city. As he walked toward the docks, he looked up and saw an American B-29 bomber drop an object attached to a parachute.
Seconds later, a blinding flash ripped through the sky, rupturing Yamaguchi's eardrums, temporarily blinding him, and leaving serious radiation burns across his upper body. He had survived 'Little Boy', the world's first combat nuclear weapon, just two miles from ground zero. After spending a harrowing night in an air-raid shelter, Yamaguchi navigated the scorched ruins to reach the Hiroshima train station, which remarkably still functioned.
Wrapped in heavy bandages, he boarded a train home to Nagasaki to rejoin his family. On August 9, despite his severe injuries, Yamaguchi reported to work at his Nagasaki office to describe the destruction in Hiroshima. Right as his skeptical supervisor accused him of exaggeration—claiming a single bomb couldn't erase an entire city—the sky outside ignited into a white flash.
'Fat Man', the second nuclear weapon, detonated directly overhead, again roughly two miles from where Yamaguchi stood. Once again, Yamaguchi survived. Though blown off his feet and suffering from severe radiation sickness and fever for weeks, he eventually recovered and lived to be 93 years old.
In 2009, the Japanese government officially recognized him as a double hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor), confirming his place in history as the ultimate survivor.