Did anyone survive the bombing of Hiroshima?

Answer 1

AnswerI believe the question is did any one person survive both attacks. If so, then the answer is yes. There is one, officially recognized Survivor of both attacks.

A young engineer named Tsutomu Yamaguchi was just finishing a three month long business trip in the city of Hiroshima. The young oil tanker designer was on his way to the train station to go home when an atomic bomb exploded overhead, throwing him to the ground and burning him badly. He was lucky enough to be evacuated from the city by train the next nay back to his hometown of... Nagasaki.

On August 9th, Yamaguchi was back at work at the Mistubishi plant, his burns covered in bandages, explaining to his coworkers about what had happened in Hiroshima, and how the entire city had been destroyed by a single bomb. His boss began yelling at him telling him he must have sustained brain damage because no bomb was that powerful, and that his story bordered on treason. At that moment the skies over Nagasaki erupted in the second atomic detonation on earth. Though most of the Mitsubishi plant was destroyed, a steel stairwell sheltered Yamaguchi's office and he became the only person to survive both atomic bomb blasts.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi , the luckiest, or perhaps unluckiest, man alive died January 4th, 2009, at the age of 93.

Answer 2

It depends what you mean. If you mean did anyone survive in the direct area, then the answer is no. People around Hiroshima would have been affected and alot of them would have died, but people would have survived aswell. But it really does depend on circumstance.

Answer 3

Yes, there were many survivors. The origin of the term "ground zero" was nuclear warfare. The bombs were designed to detonate about 1500 feet above the ground, and "ground zero" was the spot directly beneath the explosion. The farther a person was from ground zero the better the odds of surviving. The bomb let loose several lethal forces. There was the initial blast, which was tremendous, and which vaporized anybody close. There was a flash of heat, which set the cities on fire. Japanese cities of the day were almost entire constructed of wood and paper, so fire was a terrible hazard. If you look at photos of the devastated cities immediately after the bombing they are mostly level fields of ash, but the shells of the few reinforced concrete buildings away from the blast zone are still standing. Being in such a building dramatically increased the odds of surviving. A person outside, far enough away from the blast to not be killed by it but exposed to the flash, would be horribly burned. Many Japanese women were wearing kimonos with a pattern on them. Usually they were white fabric with the pattern in colors. The colors would stop the flash but the white part would not, so they wound up burned everywhere except where the pattern was over their skin, so they had the pattern on them. Many people were so badly burned that their skin fell off. Those people almost all died within a few days.

All of the above just involves immediate survival of the immediate effects of the bomb - the blast and the flash. Those who lived through it were also heavily irradiated. The radiation hazards were little understood at the time, even by the scientists who created the bomb. Many of these initial survivors grew sick and died of radiation sickness in the months and years following the bomb. They were also very much more prone to cancer of various types.

For years after the bombings in Japan radiation continued to be poorly comprehended. The US Military believed that nuclear weapons would be used on future battlefields, especially in any war with the Soviet Union. The US continued above-ground tests of nuclear bombs until the early 60s. Whenever they were going to set one off they would march thousands of army troops into the area, and put them in trenches a few miles from ground zero, to get them accustomed to being around nuclear detonations. Many of these troops claimed disproportionate health problems later, such as high cancer rates, but the US government always denied there were any adverse effects and denied compensation to the "nuclear veterans".

Among other effects of these multiple above-ground nuclear explosions was the fallout, which made its way into the food chain. The fallout would travel in the atmosphere for miles and eventually settle to the ground, on grass eaten by cows. People eating the meat of those cows, or, especially, babies drinking their milk, absorbed this fallout. Anyone growing up during those years and made to "drink their milk" has radioactive strontium-90 in their bones.

Answer 4

Yes, there was a number of people that survived the bomb.