Getting Bombed: Talk About a Week from Hell

Categories: Now See Here

Mushroom Cloud.jpg
flickr.com/omegarobot
Okay, so this has nothing to do with St. Louis but....there's an amazing story out today about a Japanese man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi.

Seems Yamaguchi, now 93 years old, was in Hiroshima on a business trip on August 6, 1945 -- the day a U.S. B-29, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb. He spent the night in the city, nursing burns to his upper body before returning to his hometown. Guess which city that was? You got it: Nagasaki.

Turns out that Yamaguchi is the first person to be certified as a survivor of both atomic blasts, the Nagaski death blow coming three days after 140,000 people perished in Hiroshima.

Getting certified means Yamaguchi -- one of an estimated 260,000 people to survive both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks -- is now qualified to get such government compensation as free medical checkups and funeral costs.

Hardly seems worth it, does it?


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