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Tsutomu Yamaguchi: The World's Only (Recognized) Double Atomic Bomb Victim · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the man, the myth, the legend. Mr Max Williams. Who
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: there he is. There's our boy. There's our shining our
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: shining boy, saving grace of the show. We need to
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  Speaker 1: get his face on a T shirt. We have heard
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  Speaker 1: from you, folks, and that's what you demand. That's what
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: we're going to do. But first, uh, they called me
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: ben and no, this is one that this is one
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  Speaker 1: we had some help with from our dear colleague, Mr
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  Speaker 1: Gabe Louzier. Yeah, check him out on this day in
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  Speaker 1: history class. And speaking of people whose faces belong on
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  Speaker 1: a T shirt, this guy Tatomu Yamaguchi. He's the only
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  Speaker 1: person to be officially recognized anyway, uh, to have survived
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  Speaker 1: two nuclear bomb blasts. Two atomic bomb blasts. Kind of
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  Speaker 1: a big deal. Yeah, you know, Uh, most people don't
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  Speaker 1: survive the one. Uh, so Yamaguchi has beaten the odds
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  Speaker 1: in terribly, terribly horrific times. You know, some two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and sixty thousand people survived the atomic bomb attacks on
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  Speaker 1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. But this guy,
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  Speaker 1: who was a Japanese engineer, didn't just survive the first attack,
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  Speaker 1: he survived the second, and perhaps most amazingly, he lived
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  Speaker 1: to tell the tale. Uh. This is a bit of
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  Speaker 1: a heavy subject, but it's a story that the three
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  Speaker 1: of us thought must be told. Want to give a
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  Speaker 1: big thanks to Jay Hemmings over on War History Online
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  Speaker 1: because nol his headline kind of hit one of the
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  Speaker 1: questions that I had immediately. Lucky or unlucky? The man
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  Speaker 1: who lived through two atomic bombs? Yeah, it's true. I
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  Speaker 1: mean it is. It is sort of like a monkey's
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  Speaker 1: paw kind of scenario. It's like, would you rather survive
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  Speaker 1: to atomic blasts than live to you know, see everyone
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  Speaker 1: you love perish in those atomic blasts and then be alone?
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  Speaker 1: Or is it better to perish with them? Uh, it's
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  Speaker 1: a good question. I mean I think if you asked him,
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  Speaker 1: I think he probably considered himself lucky. But it is
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  Speaker 1: it is a sad story, um, and one that that
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  Speaker 1: starts back all the way in UH nine August six
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  Speaker 1: to be specific, when Yamagachi was twenty nine years old
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  Speaker 1: and he was an engineer. He was actually getting ready
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  Speaker 1: to leave Hiroshima at the time. The writing was on
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  Speaker 1: the wall bad things were coming. Yeah, he was pretty young.
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  Speaker 1: He was twenty nine years old at the time, and
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  Speaker 1: he was on a business trip along with ninety day
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  Speaker 1: three month business trip for his company, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
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  Speaker 1: and August six when the bomb drops. That was supposed
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  Speaker 1: to be his very last day in the city, like
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: you said, and they were glad to go. He and
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  Speaker 1: all his colleagues had spent the entire summer laboring over
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  Speaker 1: designs for a new oil tanker, and he wasn't just
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  Speaker 1: happy to be off work. He wanted to go back
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  Speaker 1: home to his family because he and his wife had
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  Speaker 1: just had a son who was an infant. So think
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  Speaker 1: about that. You spend all summer like breaking your mind
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  Speaker 1: and your heart over an oil tanker, and everybody listening,
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  Speaker 1: you don't have to be a naval engineer to get this.
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  Speaker 1: Deadlines are stressful, and we know that more than most.
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  Speaker 1: So he he wanted to go see his kids, and
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  Speaker 1: he was actually no from what I saw on the way,
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  Speaker 1: Hemmings wrote, it is uh Yamaguchi literally almost got out
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  Speaker 1: of the city. They were on the way to the
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  Speaker 1: station when he realized, uh, he forgot some paperwork or
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a travel stamp, basically hong ko. That's interesting. So is
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  Speaker 1: this kind of like a passport. He's easy, he's traveling
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  Speaker 1: within his own country. I'm interested in that. Why this
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  Speaker 1: is a necessary thing. It's sort of like having a
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  Speaker 1: driver's license or some you know, it's important. Clearly, it's
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  Speaker 1: like everything. Oh man, there is a there's a great
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  Speaker 1: retrospective on on these things called honko or incn um
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  Speaker 1: forgive our Japanese we're not needed speakers. It's the it's
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  Speaker 1: the signature stamp. You know, it's your personal seal. And
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people who moved to Japan from abroad
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  Speaker 1: and spend time there have a have a crash course
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  Speaker 1: in learning these things, because ideally you don't just sign
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  Speaker 1: stuff with like a pen. You have to have this stamp,
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  Speaker 1: this seal. So it was important. It wasn't like him thinking, oh,
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  Speaker 1: did I leave the oven on in the kitchen or something.
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  Speaker 1: He would have probably needed that to sign anything official,
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  Speaker 1: or he would have to go get a new one made.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting because I'm looking it up, but it's it
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  Speaker 1: seems like it's interchangeable with the signature. But I guess
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  Speaker 1: if you're signing on behalf of another entity or a company,
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  Speaker 1: then that's what it gets tricky. Perhaps. Yeah, And I
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  Speaker 1: really want one learning about this because these beautiful fast
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: carved from I guess bamboo or any other than it
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  Speaker 1: could be another kind of softer would um and you
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  Speaker 1: you know, keep in a really nice, bespoken case. And
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  Speaker 1: it really is kind of like a personal you know,
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  Speaker 1: item that many folks would carry around with them all
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  Speaker 1: the time. Um. Probably a little less crucial now than
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  Speaker 1: maybe it was then. UM, But I'd be really interested
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  Speaker 1: in seeing some of these and collections, and also the
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  Speaker 1: idea of like forging one, you know, it's sort of
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  Speaker 1: the equivalent of having like a royal seal. I guess.
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  Speaker 1: But I'm sorry, we're getting so caught up in this
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  Speaker 1: that I just think it's fascinating. But by the way,
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  Speaker 1: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries it is Mitsubishi, UM. It is the
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  Speaker 1: Mitsubishi that we know today. It's a company that obviously
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  Speaker 1: makes cars. It's the division of of the Mitsubishi group.
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  Speaker 1: Rather um, Mitsubishi Motors is the division that makes cars.
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  Speaker 1: Mitsubishi Heavy is the division that makes what it sounds
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  Speaker 1: like heavy machinery and equipment, uh, like an oil tanker,
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  Speaker 1: which is what he had been working on. So he
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  Speaker 1: realizes he's left his travel stamp at his place of work,
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  Speaker 1: and so he has to go back and get it.
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  Speaker 1: Around a fifteen in the morning, he's walking to the
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  Speaker 1: shipyard to get that travel stamp when he hears the
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  Speaker 1: sound of an aircraft hovering overhead and he looks into
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  Speaker 1: the sky and he sees a B twenty nine bomber,
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  Speaker 1: the Aola Gay specifically, and he sees a small object
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  Speaker 1: being dropped attached to a parachute, and then the sky
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  Speaker 1: is on fire. He described it later as seeing um
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  Speaker 1: the lightning quote the lightning of a huge magnesium flare.
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  Speaker 1: At least he he likened it to that. And this
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  Speaker 1: is a guy that's you know, worked with these kinds
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  Speaker 1: of chemicals, and he, you know, he knows what he's
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  Speaker 1: talking about. He had just enough time reaction time to
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  Speaker 1: to hide himself, to to cover himself, duck and cover
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  Speaker 1: in a ditch. Um and that's when he heard the
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  Speaker 1: sound that this, uh, this object that had split the sky.
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  Speaker 1: Make Yeah. So for people familiar with this tragedy, the
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  Speaker 1: Enola Gay dropped the bomb called little Boy, and it's
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  Speaker 1: amazing that Yam and Gucci was not just that he survived,
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  Speaker 1: but it's amazing that he was able to see this
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  Speaker 1: happen and the shock wave that occurred. Shout out to
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  Speaker 1: our pal Rachel Lance, the number one expert on underwater
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  Speaker 1: explosions and explosions in general. The shock wave that occurred
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  Speaker 1: was so powerful it sucked him out of the ditch
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  Speaker 1: that he was hiding in, and it spun him around
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  Speaker 1: in the air and then threw him into a potato patch.
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  Speaker 1: He would later learn that he was less than two
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  Speaker 1: miles from ground zero, and we have his own words
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  Speaker 1: from a interview he did with a British newspaper at
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  Speaker 1: the Times. He said, I didn't know what had happened.
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  Speaker 1: I think I fainted for a while. When I opened
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  Speaker 1: my eyes, everything was dark and I couldn't see much.
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  Speaker 1: It was like the start of a film at the
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  Speaker 1: cinema before the picture has begun, when the blank frames
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  Speaker 1: are just flashing up without any sound, and uh, you know,
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  Speaker 1: for for at least a little bit, he's pretty sure
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  Speaker 1: he's dead, and he's thinking, okay, this is what death
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  Speaker 1: is like. He thinks he's crossed the mortal veil, just
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  Speaker 1: to reiterate two miles from where the bomb hit. I
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  Speaker 1: mean that it's just unheard of. It seems like he
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  Speaker 1: would have been a goner. So for him to believe,
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  Speaker 1: you know, to believe that he had, you know, obviously,
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  Speaker 1: it's like it's a country with very deeply held religious
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  Speaker 1: beliefs as well, so I could totally understand that happening. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And you mentioned the sound being utterly cinematic. Um he
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  Speaker 1: he says to him, he says in an interview at
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  Speaker 1: the Times, as he said, eventually the darkness cleared and
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  Speaker 1: I realized I was alive. When the noise and the
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  Speaker 1: blasts subsided, I saw a huge mushroom shaped pillar of
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  Speaker 1: fire rising up high into the guy. It was like
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  Speaker 1: a tornado, although it didn't move, but it rose and
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  Speaker 1: spread out horizontally. At the top there was prismatic light
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  Speaker 1: which was changing in a complicated rhythm, like the patterns
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  Speaker 1: of a kaleidoscope. What a wonderful recollection that is. And
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  Speaker 1: you can find more about that and and all that's
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  Speaker 1: interesting article by John Kurosky. I just think that's a
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  Speaker 1: very obviously horrific scene. That he's describing, but he describes
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  Speaker 1: it with almost like a elegance, you know, he's I mean,
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  Speaker 1: he's had luckily the time to think about this, and
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  Speaker 1: this is one of the most horrible impactful moments of
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  Speaker 1: his life and in the history of Japan. The sun
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  Speaker 1: is blotted out. We said it was about a fifteen
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  Speaker 1: in the morning. The sun is gone because of all
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  Speaker 1: the dust and debris. There are pillars of falling ash.
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  Speaker 1: Like you said, he physically sees the mushroom cloud. He's
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  Speaker 1: just two miles away from debtonation. He is temporarily blinded,
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  Speaker 1: thankfully it's temporary. The blast blew out both of his
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  Speaker 1: ear drums. The left side of this body, there is
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  Speaker 1: a question that I had had originally. The left side
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  Speaker 1: of his body is charred, and he is like at
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  Speaker 1: this point to be clear, if he had just laid
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  Speaker 1: down from shock, he would have died almost certainly. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: this man is able to crawl despite his grievous wounds.
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  Speaker 1: He's able to crawl to a bomb shelter and someone
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  Speaker 1: is able to assist him, and he gets medical assistance.
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  Speaker 1: And then he finds out that get this, his co
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  Speaker 1: workers that were supposed to leave the city also survived
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  Speaker 1: Kuniyoshi Sato and Akira Iwanaka. They stayed in an air
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  Speaker 1: raid shelter overnight as well, and they said, okay, guys,
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  Speaker 1: I think we can all agree we need to get
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  Speaker 1: out of town. We need to leave. We don't need
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  Speaker 1: to have a meeting about it. It's just time to go.
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  Speaker 1: So they get ready to go to Nagasaki. So they
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  Speaker 1: make their way to Nagasaki. But it's not a sure thing,
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  Speaker 1: right They somehow they heard. You know, if you've ever
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  Speaker 1: been in an emergency situation, you know that rumors take
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  Speaker 1: out a life of their own. And so these guys heard,
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  Speaker 1: they overheard people saying the trains were somehow still running.
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  Speaker 1: So they said, okay, we've got to make it to
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  Speaker 1: the train station. And um, when they emerge from that shelter, man,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine what greeted them. Just absolute havoc, chaos,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: the walking dead. You know. Um, if you are of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: strong constitution, I highly recommend a couple of films um,
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  Speaker 1: both animated Japanese films, The Grave of Fireflies, which is
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  Speaker 1: beautiful and heartbreaking. But then there is another one called
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  Speaker 1: Barefoot jen Um from three and it is this exact
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: uh scenario that has depicted of the B twenty nine
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  Speaker 1: um dropping. Uh, this this bomb and it shows the fallouse.
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  Speaker 1: I'm watching it right now. It is horrific. It's like
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  Speaker 1: you know, uh, people's skin melting off and teeth falling
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  Speaker 1: out of their heads and eyeballs liquefying and just being
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  Speaker 1: reduced to just pulsating, you know, ash and gore. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's really one of the most horrific things I've ever
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  Speaker 1: seen in an animated film. Um. So to see this
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  Speaker 1: and have the perspective of how just two miles away
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  Speaker 1: this man was spared uh and he still received these
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  Speaker 1: really terrible burns on half his body. M h. And
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this journey through a destroyed city is something you cannot
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  Speaker 1: really put into words. It's experiential, right, it's phenomenal logical.
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  Speaker 1: You have to go through that experience yourself to fully
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  Speaker 1: understand it. There are cadavers, there are corpses that have
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  Speaker 1: physically melted, and they're everywhere. Buildings are shattered, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the bridges are twisted. Uh. They get to a
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  Speaker 1: river crossing and Yamaguchi has to swim through a layer
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  Speaker 1: of corpses to reach this station. And when he gets
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  Speaker 1: to the station, it turns out the train is working.
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  Speaker 1: It's filled with people who have narrowly survived the explosion
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: with terrible, terrible injuries, both mental and of course physical.
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  Speaker 1: But you'll be happy to know, ridiculous historians, he does
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  Speaker 1: make it home to reunite with his wife and their
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  Speaker 1: infant child. And if we fast forward sixteen hours after
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  Speaker 1: the detonation of Little Boy, you see that President Harry
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Truman gives a speech that reveals the atomic bomb to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world for the first time. Of course,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: people like yeah mcgucci are already very well aware that
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  Speaker 1: something catastrophic has occurred, but they didn't know exactly what happened,
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  Speaker 1: what this explosion was. And that's what Truman says. It
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  Speaker 1: is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And in his speech he rationalizes the attack on Japan.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Now we know the flight that Theola Gate took, we
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: know about the thousands and thousands who died immediately, and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: then the toll, the death toll continues, right because people
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: are dying of other related injuries, tens of thousands of
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  Speaker 1: them for weeks after this. And this is where this
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: is the same speech where Truman's says, if Japan doesn't surrender,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: it can expect a reign of ruin from the air,
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  Speaker 1: the like of which has never been seen on this earth.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's a war against civilians At that point, I mean, really,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: how do we reconcile this in our history? Like it's
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: just utter terrorism? And I know you know that we're
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you know, rock in a hard place, but we've never
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: had to use this again and resoorts using it again,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and now it's just this whole like game of like
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: kind of standoff, you know with the folks that have
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: nuclear powers. But is this something you've ever thought about? Ben, Like,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: is are we do as a country? Do we justify
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: this act? Or is it something we look back on
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and in shame. You know, it's a complex topic in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: that regard, and you will hear various different answers depending
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: on people's perspectives. Right about about so many events in
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: World War two, you know, uh shinzo Abe, the former
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: prime min star of Japan who was recently assassinated, refused
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to apologize for any of Japan's actions in World War
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Two from what I understand, But yeah, you know, we
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: have to keep in mind that I feel like I
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: have to say this more and more often these days.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: When elephants wage war, it's the grass that suffers. So
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: these are questions that Yamaguchi isn't quite answering at this point, right.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: He's just trying to survive, and there is amid all
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: this horror, I quld you not man. Something that made
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: me laugh, and we'll get to it in a second.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Here's what happens. He's back in Nagasaki. It's August eight now.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: He goes to the hospital and the doctor who is
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: treating Yamaguchi is an old school chum of his. But
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the burns of Yamaguchi endured are so severe that at
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: first his old friend doesn't recognize him. Neither does his family.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: His mom calls him a ghost. When he gets back home,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: he's on the verge of collapse. Here's here's the part
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that made me laugh a little bit. The next morning,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: August nine, still wrapped up in bandages, Yamaguchi gets up
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and goes to work. He goes to Mitsubishi's Nagasaki office. Yeah,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty serious work ethic there. But I would
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: say this is let's just consider this a snow day, right, Yeah,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: like civilization is under attack. Yeah, yeah, it's at the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: very least on pause around eleven am. He he wasn't
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the only one, uh, he was in a meeting. They
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: were having meetings with the director of the company who
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: wanted a full report on Hiroshima from from the guy
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: with burns over you know, of his body, um, and
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: he discussed the events that he had witnessed on on
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the sixth, everything from the blinding light to the sound
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: he His superiors actually were incredulous. They thought that he
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: was you know, pulling their leg or that he was
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: in some way, you know, exaggerating because this kind of
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the power of this kind of weapon was not really
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: known yet. They wanted to know how this was possible
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: because this was based on any artillery or or you know,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: armament that they were aware of. This is not something
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: that exists. Yeah, exactly. It sounds pretty crazy, right, And
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: if you look at it from the perspective of his employers,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: it is understandable that they could find this hard to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: believe because he was clearly heavily injured, so he might
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: not have maybe the most accurate recollection of the disaster
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: that occurred. And he's telling his employers. He's saying, look,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not crazy. A bomb dropped and it destroyed the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: entire city. I hope, he said, all so I showed
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: up to work, You're welcome, but why are you grilling me?
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Get off my back? And the thing is, will never
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: know if he was about to say that while he
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was trying to explain himself, because then, Noel, there was
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: another explosion. Yeah, there was, Um, you know, you probably
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: could have seen that coming. They are in Nagasaki at
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: this point. Uh. That was the side of the second
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: atomic bomb that was dropped, called fat Man, and this
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: one was worse. It was more powerful. That's why it
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was the fat Man. The other one was a little boy.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: He literally saw the city in front of him out
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  Speaker 1: the window of the view of his office just implode,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: last shattered instantly, um, sending just all kinds of shards
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of you know, deadly broken glass shooting through the room. Again.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Just you can look up the scene if you're interested.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe I don't want to watch the whole movie, but
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: this movie Barefoot gin Um. If you just type in
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Barefoot gen g and nuclear bomb scene, it depicts all
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: of this stuff that we're describing and just the most
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: horrific detail. And there's a particular part where it shows
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: glass windows shattering, and he's just like almost as if
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: they're like being driven by some sort of like telepathy,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: just these shards of glass flying and just you know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: skewering people. I mean, this was very, very real, um.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And sometimes seeing these kinds of things in a cartoon
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: just makes them even more real. Weirdly, I don't know
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: why that is, but it's I found that to be
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the case. Um. Anyway, So he Yeah, if his bosses
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: didn't believe him before, as sure as I'll believe him now. Huh. Yeah,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and can you imagine stuff Frommagucci's perspective. In a later
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: interview with The Independent, he tells them that he sincerely
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: thought the mushroom Cloud had somehow followed him from Hiroshima,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and yeah, and you can't blame him. And like you said, man,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: this second um is even more powerful and luckily, like
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: so next question is how does he survive this one? Luckily?
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: The landscape, the topography of the city, it's very hilly, right,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and there was a reinforced stairwell that sort of muffled
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the blast inside the office. But his bandages were literally
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: blown off. He got hit by another surge of radiation.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: He had yet again been within two miles of a
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, so he runs from the Midsubishi building. He
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: is again very very heavily injured, but and this is
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: something very understandable, his first goal is to find his
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: family to see if they are alive. He gets to
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: his neighborhood, noal. He gets to his house and he
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: sees that part of it has been destroyed in the blast.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: But amaze seeingly enough, his wife and his infant son
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: are okay. They have cuts and bruises, but not like
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: not injuries that would require hospitalization because they were hiding
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: in a tunnel. Yeah, I mean, he really just cut.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like luck at this point, because it
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: wasn't even something that anybody could have been prepared for
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: or known necessarily what to do, you know, to make
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: sure but you didn't get more grievously injured, and you know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And I was reading some some comments on a message
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: board about this, and somebody pointed out very grimly that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: how messed up is that the people that were closest
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: to the blast who got vaporized for the lucky ones.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: That's something people often speculate about the event of nuclear
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: war or nuclear exchanges. If you are in a large city,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: do you want to live through the initial blast. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a heavy question, but it's um It's an important question,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and you'll see why when we examine what happens to Yamaguchi.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: And the reason his wife is in the tunnel by
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the way, with their son is because she had been
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: out trying to find burn ointment for her husband, so
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: she wasn't in the house when it was destroyed. That's
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: how that's how they ended up hiding in a tunnel.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So you could say, as they mentioned on History dot Com,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: that if Yamaguchi hadn't been injured at Hiroshima, his entire
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: family might have died that day at Nagasaki. Yeah, so
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: they live in a bomb shelter near what used to
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: be their house. As Japan surrenders, and then Yamaguchi, along
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: with so many other people in Japan, learns what happens
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: when you are exposed to an atomic bomb. And to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that quote you mentioned the message board, this is why
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: some people say in theory that they would prefer to
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: be vaporized, and he was, of course, was hit twice
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: with this radiation. His hair fell out, you know, those
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: burns that we talked about, started to get infected. He
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: was vomiting constantly. Um, you know, it was grievously ill.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: He described hearing about the surrender of Japan's Emperor Hirohito,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and he said he was completely ambivalent about it because
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of his condition. He says, quote, I was neither sorry
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: nor glad. I was seriously ill with a fever, eating
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: almost nothing, hardly even drinking. I thought that I was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: about to cross over to the other side. But little
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: by little he he got better. Didn't even Yeah, he did.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And this is another stroke of great fortune, because many
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: victims of radiation exposure did not recover, and they would
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: have injuries that haunted them for the rest of their lives,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: or they would die as a result of the radiation.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: He went on. Yamaguchi, that is to live surprisingly relatively
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: nor old life. He was a translator for the US
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Armed Forces during their occupation of Japan. He taught school
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: for a while, and then eventually he gets back into engineering.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: For you guessed if folks Mitsubishi. He goes on to
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: have two more kids in the nineteen fifties. Uh, one
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: big change in his life. He does take up writing poetry,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: but it isn't until many decades later, in the two thousands,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: that he ever speaks publicly about his experience. Yeah, that's right,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and I mean we're obviously so glad that he did.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a powerful story. I mean, you know,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: we always talk about what qualifies a historical tail as
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: being ridiculous, and I think we could probably both agree,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: or all three of us could agree that surviving or
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: just being unlucky enough to be present for two of
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: histories most brutal and deadly attacks, only to be able
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to survive. I think that's ridiculous in and of itself.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And then it's just kind of like it almost is
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: too too much to believe, you know, it's almost too
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: insane to believe this could possibly happen, that one person
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: could be that unlucky but also that lucky. Yeah. Yeah,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: going back to that headline really caught me. Later, his
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: daughter Toshiko points out something that I speak I think
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: speaks to his character, she says afterwards, meaning after his recovery,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: he was fine. We hardly noticed he was a survivor
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: or what's called a hippop kusha. He was so healthy.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: She says that he thought participating in anti bomb protest
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: or advocating for nuclear disarmament would have been unfair to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: people who were really sick. So he had a conscience
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: about it. You know, he didn't want to be I think,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: a performative face of a cause. But like so many people,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: so many survivors of the atomic bombs, Suto Yamaguchi ultimately,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: along with his family, suffered the long term effects of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: radiation exposure. And this is the stuff that gets people
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: many many years later, both his son and his wife
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: eventually passed away due to cancer from from the exposure. Yeah,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, and then you know, it's a long game
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: for a lot of these folks, as we know from
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I mean honestly largely on the stuff they don't want
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you to know. We talk about corporations that you know,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: poison communities with toxic chemicals and um, you know, people's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: proximity near nuclear waste dump sites and how that stuff
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: can leach into the soil and maybe you don't get
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: sick right away, but it it it becomes this legacy
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of of death and illness and and just you know,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: reduction of quality of life, and you know, you hear
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: about class action lawsuits and things like that. Are all
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: these companies and sometimes that helps and helps pay for things,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: but ultimately you're never gonna get your life back. But
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it's not like you can sue the United States for
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: you know, pain and suffering. When it was like, you know,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: an active, hot war, right, But best I thought I
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: was that I was getting out earlier. Then it's like,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: at what point does something become a war crime? Like
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: isn't this overkill? And you think it's not against a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: military basis against the Affilian population. That's like where I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: think about it too. It's like yeah, I don't know, yeah,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: And it's it's a question that people wrestle with in
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: in the In the time, dropping the atomic bomb was
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: not seen as a war crime, but it was seen
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: as a means to an end. The idea was at
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: least two American military minds that they had a bomb
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: that could in the war. They had this technology and
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: if they didn't drop it, they would be traveled, they
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: would be essentially do mean their American soldiers to die?
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: So it was a greater good argument from their perspective
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: but as you know, again from stuff they don't want
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: you to know, check out our book coming out October
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: eleven wherever you find books. Um As as you know,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that greater Good argument is one heck of a slippery slope,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and it's a very very dangerous one. And just just
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: to add, I just I was just googling this as
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: we were talking about, and there's a really great um
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: piece on NPR that came out on the seventy five
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: anniversary of the bombings um from August six, and it
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: interviews quite a few legal scholars who say today this
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: absolutely would have been viewed as a war crime. Yes, yeah,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I mean I remember hearing the number of like they
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: they asked me it would take like seven hundred and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand Americans who actually capture Japan. That was the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: number that they had flown and floated around a lot,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and they expected millions of deaths of Japanese. But to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: your point that that's a really slivery slope saying like, well,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: we're actually saving Japanese lives by killing all these Japanese immediately,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: like instantly with the nuclear bombs. So it's like it's yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it just doesn't hold up you know, and this as
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: as Yamaguchi ages, he begins to publicly speak out against
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in general. He writes a memoir he corresponds
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: with President Barack Obama about this. He appears in a
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: documentary that is screened at the United Nations in two
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: thousand and six. He is one of around a hundred
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and sixty five survivors who are thought to have survived
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: both the bombings, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Yamaguchi is
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: distinct because he is the only person who is recognized
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: by the Japanese government as having survived I've both attacks.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And he only got that recognition, by the way, because
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: he repeatedly wrote in and asked for it. Fascinating stuff.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: And you can find the pictures of this man from
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: you know, not terribly long ago. He did. He did
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: pass away in two thousand nine, but not visibly scarred
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: or mutilated in any ways as a cane. But it
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: seems like he lived a very full life, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: past this tragic event. And obviously, you know, this is
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the kind of PTSD that doesn't just like up and disappear.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think it's I think he maybe
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: felt strongly about being recognized as that, not for you know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: some sort of glory, but just so he could talk
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to people about it, describe it, yes, living history, yes,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the testimony to the horrors of war, but also the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: enduring power of the human spirit, which I know otherwise
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: might sound a little pretentious or something, but this, this
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: is a true story. And you know when he passes
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: away unfortunately due to stomach cancer at the age of ninete,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: what I think we can take away from this tale
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: is that history is always closer than you think. Two
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: thousand nine was not very long ago at all, and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: with that we have to remember that history, the good
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and the bad, the joy and the terror, it doesn't
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: exist in some dusty tone. It's not just a footnote
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: in a book in the library. It's alive. It's real,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and we forget it at our peril. Absolutely point well made,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and if you want to hear more, you know from
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Yamaguchi he actually was a pretty extensive poet. He didn't
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: speak a ton about the bombings to even his own
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: family until late in life, but he created uh tanka,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: which is a type of poet tree form like a haikuba,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: but but but different. Similar that it has a pattern
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of of alternating pattern of a number of syllables, so
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: it is a thirty one syllable poem in the pattern
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: of five seven five seven seven. Um. I was not
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: aware of this format, but you can't actually read some
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of these that he wrote that he used as a
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: as a way of expressing some of these memories and
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: feelings surrounding it. So, um, that's something that you can
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: look up and maybe get a glimpse a little more
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: specifically into into this guy's this guy's mind. That's a
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: beautiful way to in this story. You know, thank you,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: thank you for pointing that out. This is only one
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: story of people who have narrowly survived these tremendous disasters,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately, there may be more stories like this in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the future. So this was a little bit of a
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: heavy wooden but again we believe it is an important
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: story to tell. History is closer than you think, and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: our next episode is closer than you think. No, what
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: are we doing for our next episode? You know, Ben,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked for our next episode. We actually
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: have a really cool partnership with twenty three and me,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the company that you know lets you take your DNA
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: test and find out all kinds of crazy stuff about
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: your lineage. And we both took the test and were
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I think both uh surprised, pleasantly surprised at how far
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: these things have come, but we've been both taking them
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: in the past as well. Lots of cool information about
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: our lineage that we discussed, but also we just discussed
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the history, uh and kind of controversy surrounding the discovery
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: of DNA itself. Yeah, I feel like Stefan on the
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Old S and L Sketch. You know, this episode has everything.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: We're not going to do the whole bit. We don't
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: want to spoil it, but we do hope you tune
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: in because I think we all had a fascinating time,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: even more fascinating than we thought it would be. At
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: the offset and thanks as always to our super producer,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. Thanks of course to Gay Bluesier, our
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: little research associate. It's all grown up, no he is.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Check out his amazing daily podcast This Day in History Class.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks of course to Alex Williams who can post our track.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Christopher Roscio is here in spirit, Eves Jeff Coates hat
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: in the world doing amazing things. I gotta thank Max again,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: give him another wou love that guy. And thanks to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you Ben for me and a friend travel down the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: road and back again. If you're a pal and a Confidanteal,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: thank you as well, my friend. We'll see you next time. Folks.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
• 36:47
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• 36:50
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