YamaguchiThe world lost a very special survivor this week but I hope that we will not forget his story. Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who has died at the ripe old age of 93, was the last hibakusha. After school, he trained as an engineer and then worked for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. On 6 August 1945 he was visiting Hiroshima on a business trip. At 8.15 that morning, high above the city, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb, dubbed Little Boy. When Little Boy detonated, over 80,000 people were instantly killed. Another 60,000 people died in the months that followed. The then twenty-nine year-old Yamaguchi was less than two miles from the blast but, though he was badly burned, he survived. He spent that night in an air raid shelter and the following morning set off back to his home in Nagasaki, some 180 miles away. He arrived there on 8 August. At 11 o’clock the next morning a second nuclear bomb, nicknamed Fat Boy, detonated above the city, killing some 70,000 people. In a repeat miracle, Yamaguchi, together with his wife and infant son, survived. Japan surrendered less than a week later. After the war Yamaguchi worked for the US forces in Nagasaki as a translator and went on to become a teacher. ‘I could have died on either of those two days,’ he later said. ‘Everything that followed was a bonus.’