The Man Who Survived Two Nuclear Bombs - Tsutomu Yamaguchi — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00in the summer of august 6 1945
2. 0:04sutomu yamaguchi was on a three-month
3. 0:06long work trip with his colleagues
4. 0:08designing a new oil tanker the work was
5. 0:12arduous but the last day of work has
6. 0:14finally come
7. 0:16it was time for yamaguchi to head home
8. 0:18where
9. 0:19his wife hisako and his son katsutoshi
10. 0:22was waiting for him as yamaguchi was
11. 0:25walking at mitsubishi's shipyard
12. 0:27around 8 15 am the sound of a drone
13. 0:30can be heard overhead he looked at the
14. 0:33sky
15. 0:34and saw a bomber soaring over the city
16. 0:38along its trail the bomber drops a small
17. 0:41object connected to a parachute
18. 0:44yamaguchi was
19. 0:46not familiar with what's about to come
20. 0:48but
21. 0:49what happens next will haunt the rest of
22. 0:51his life
23. 0:53all of a sudden the whole sky erupted in
24. 0:56a blaze of light
25. 0:59fortunately yamaguchi was quick to
26. 1:01protect himself by
27. 1:03diving into a ditch before an ear
28. 1:05splitting boom rang out
29. 1:07the shock wave that accompanied the bomb
30. 1:09sucked yamaguchi from the ground spun
31. 1:12him in the air like a tornado
32. 1:14and sent him hurtling into a nearby
33. 1:16potato patch
34. 1:18yamaguchi fainted for a while and when
35. 1:20he opened his eyes
36. 1:22all he could see was darkness
37. 1:25his face and forearms had been badly
38. 1:28burned
39. 1:29and both his eardrums were ruptured the
40. 1:32bright sky was covered by a cloud of
41. 1:34thick dust and debris
42. 1:36by the atomic blast blocking the morning
43. 1:38sun almost completely
44. 1:40when he looked at his surroundings all
45. 1:42he could see
46. 1:43was falling ashes the place where he saw
47. 1:47the bomb dropped
48. 1:48a monstrous fiery mushroom cloud towered
49. 1:51the sky
50. 1:53yamaguchi wondered in a daze toward what
51. 1:56remained of the mitsubishi shipyard
52. 1:59there he found two of his co-workers
53. 2:02both of whom had survived the blast
54. 2:05after spending a restless night in an
55. 2:07air raid shelter
56. 2:08the men awoke on august 7th and made
57. 2:11their way
58. 2:12toward the train station which they had
59. 2:14heard was somehow
60. 2:16still operating the journey took them
61. 2:19through
62. 2:20a nightmarish landscape of still
63. 2:22flickering fires
64. 2:24shattered buildings and charred and
65. 2:26melted corpses
66. 2:27lining the streets many of the city's
67. 2:30bridges had been turned into twisted
68. 2:32wreckage
69. 2:32and at one river crossing yamaguchi was
70. 2:35forced to swim
71. 2:37through a layer of floating dead bodies
72. 2:40upon reaching the station he boarded a
73. 2:42train full of burned and bewildered
74. 2:44passengers
75. 2:45and settled in for the overnight ride to
76. 2:48his hometown
77. 2:49of nagasaki
78. 2:5216 hours after the explosion people
79. 2:55started to learn about the existence of
80. 2:57the atom bomb
81. 2:59in a speech by president harry truman he
82. 3:01said
83. 3:02it is a harnessing of the basic power of
84. 3:04the universe
85. 3:06the force from which the sun draws its
86. 3:08power has been loosed against those
87. 3:10who brought war to the far east
88. 3:14a b-29 bomber called the enola gay
89. 3:17had taken off the pacific island of
90. 3:19tinian and
91. 3:20flown some 1500 miles before detonating
92. 3:24a bomb
93. 3:25known as little boy in the skies over
94. 3:27hiroshima
95. 3:29the blast had immediately killed some 80
96. 3:32000 people and tens of thousands more
97. 3:35would perish in the weeks that followed
98. 3:38truman warned in his statement that
99. 3:40if japan did not surrender it could
100. 3:43expect a reign of ruin from the air
101. 3:46the like of which has never been seen on
102. 3:48this earth
103. 3:51yamaguchi arrived in nagasaki early in
104. 3:53the morning on august 8th
105. 3:55and limped to the hospital the doctor
106. 3:57who treated him was a former school
107. 3:59classmate
108. 4:00but the blackened burns on yamaguchi's
109. 4:02hands and face were so severe
110. 4:05that the man did not recognize him at
111. 4:07first
112. 4:08similarly when he returned home
113. 4:11afterward
114. 4:12his mother couldn't recognize him and
115. 4:14accused him
116. 4:15of being a ghost despite the severe
117. 4:19injury yamaguchi dragged himself out of
118. 4:22bed
119. 4:22on the morning of august 9 and reported
120. 4:25for work at mitsubishi's nagasaki office
121. 4:28around 11am he found himself in a
122. 4:32meeting with a company director
123. 4:33who demanded a full report on hiroshima
124. 4:37the engineer recounted the scattered
125. 4:39events of august 6.
126. 4:41the blinding light the deafening boom
127. 4:44but
128. 4:44his superiors did not believe him
129. 4:48how could a single bomb destroy an
130. 4:50entire city
131. 4:52yamaguchi was trying to explain himself
132. 4:54when all of a sudden
133. 4:56the landscape outside suddenly exploded
134. 4:59with a familiar explosion it was
135. 5:02another iridescent white flash and
136. 5:06like the first time yamaguchi quickly
137. 5:09dropped to the ground
138. 5:10just seconds before the shockwave
139. 5:13shattered the office windows and
140. 5:15sent broken glass and debris careening
141. 5:18through the room
142. 5:19the atom bomb that hit nagasaki was even
143. 5:22more powerful than the one
144. 5:24dropped on hiroshima but as yamaguchi
145. 5:27would later
146. 5:28learn the city's hilly landscape and a
147. 5:31reinforced stairwell
148. 5:32had combined to muffle the blast inside
149. 5:35the office
150. 5:36his bandages were blown off and he was
151. 5:38hit by
152. 5:39yet another search of cancer-causing
153. 5:42radiation
154. 5:43but he emerged relatively unhurt
155. 5:46for the second time in three days he had
156. 5:49had the misfortune
157. 5:50of being within two miles of a nuclear
158. 5:53explosion
159. 5:54after fleeing from the skeleton of the
160. 5:56mitsubishi building
161. 5:58yamaguchi rushed through a bomb ravaged
162. 6:00nagasaki
163. 6:01to check on his wife and son he feared
164. 6:04the worst when he saw
165. 6:06a section of his house had been reduced
166. 6:08to rubble
167. 6:09but he soon found both had sustained
168. 6:12only superficial injuries
169. 6:14his wife had been out looking for burn
170. 6:17ointment for her husband
171. 6:19and when the explosion came she and the
172. 6:21baby had taken refuge in a tunnel
173. 6:24it was yet another strange twist of fate
174. 6:27if
175. 6:28yamaguchi had not been hurt at hiroshima
176. 6:31his family might have been killed at
177. 6:33nagasaki
178. 6:34in the days that followed yamaguchi's
179. 6:37double dose of radiation took its toll
180. 6:39his hair fell out the wounds on his arms
181. 6:42turned gangrenes
182. 6:44and he began vomiting incessantly
183. 6:47he was still languishing in a bomb
184. 6:49shelter with his family on august 15th
185. 6:52when japan's emperor hirohito announced
186. 6:55the country's surrender in a radio
187. 6:57broadcast
188. 6:58when yamaguchi was asked about the
189. 7:00decision to surrender
190. 7:02he said i had no feeling about it
191. 7:05i was neither sorry nor glad i was
192. 7:08seriously ill with a fever
193. 7:10eating almost nothing hardly even
194. 7:13drinking
195. 7:14i thought that i was about to cross to
196. 7:16the other side
197. 7:18yet unlike so many victims of radiation
198. 7:21exposure
199. 7:22yamaguchi slowly recovered and went on
200. 7:25to live
201. 7:25a relatively normal life he served as a
202. 7:29translator for the u.s armed forces
203. 7:32during their occupation of japan
204. 7:34and later taught school before resuming
205. 7:36his engineering career
206. 7:37at mitsubishi he and his wife even had
207. 7:41two more children
208. 7:42in the 1950s both of them girls
209. 7:45yamaguchi dealt with the horrific
210. 7:47memories of hiroshima and nagasaki
211. 7:50by writing poetry but he avoided
212. 7:52discussing his experiences publicly
213. 7:55until the 2000s when he released a
214. 7:57memoir
215. 7:58and became part of the movement of the
216. 8:00anti-atomic weapons
217. 8:03he later journeyed to new york in 2006
218. 8:06and spoke about nuclear disarmament
219. 8:08before the united nations
220. 8:11having experienced atomic bombings twice
221. 8:13and survived
222. 8:14it is my destiny to talk about it he
223. 8:17said in his speech
224. 8:20it is believed that some 165 people
225. 8:24may have experienced both attacks yet
226. 8:27yamaguchi was the only person
227. 8:29officially recognized by the japanese
228. 8:31government
229. 8:32as nicho hibakusha or twice bond person
230. 8:37he finally won the distinction in 2009
231. 8:40only a year before he died at the age of
232. 8:5093.