‘I saw both of the bombs and lived’
Anyone who survived the world’s first atom bomb blast must have felt the worst was past. But Kazuko Sadamaru was caught up in the second explosion too. That she did so and is still alive today is perhaps the most uniquely improbable story of all.
The road north of Hiroshima, winding through rice paddies and cedar green mountains, leads to the quintessentially Japanese home of Mrs Sadamaru. This unassuming woman, sitting cross-legged and wearing slippers on a tatami mat by the veranda, is among a handful of people alive who witnessed both the Hiroshima bomb and the obliteration of Nagasaki three days later.
Sitting near her golden Buddhist shrine and pouring iced green tea, Mrs Sadamaru, now 80, explained that she left her hospital in Nagasaki on 5 August 1945 to accompany a soldier to a town near Hiroshima, some 260 miles away. The following day, she was on a train approaching the city when ‘Little Boy’ exploded at 8.15am.
