Bad Week

You are not having a bad week. You've never had a bad week. You don't know the meaning of the term "bad week".

This man knows the meaning, though.

On the 6th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu was on a business trip to Hiroshima. That day he sustained serious burns during the atomic blast, and the next day he was evacuated back home. Evacuated back to Nagasaki. On the 9th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu saw his home city nuked.

In some ways he's a very unlucky man, having been present at the only two times in history that atomic bombs were used against another country. But in a way he's incredibly lucky. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but Yamaguchi survived them both. He also survived the subsequent two decades when a large proportion of the bomb survivors died of cancer or leukaemia from the radiation, and this despite having been exposed to large amounts when he was searching for his relatives in Ground Zero.

This week Yamaguchi officially had his ID updated to show that he survived two atomic bombs. "My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die." So. If you think you're having a bad week, at least you haven't been nuked twice. And if Yamaguchi can find a positive side to his experience then you can too.