Today’s Surviving Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Today we conclude the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who was injured by the atomic blasts at Hiroshima AND Nagasaki. We pick up the tale after Tsutomu has reunited with his family in an air raid shelter after the blast in Nagasaki.
After the exhilaration of seeing them wore off, Yamaguchi felt even more ill than before. In fact, over the next week he did little but lie in the shelter and suffer like Job. His hair fell out. Boils erupted. He vomited incessantly. His face swelled. He lost hearing in one ear. His reburned skin flaked off, and beneath it his flesh glowed raw red “like whale meat” and pierced him with pain. And as badly as Yamaguchi and others suffered during those months, geneticists feared the long-term agony would be equally bad, as mutations slowly began surfacing.
What happens after these mutations? Cells overwhelmed with DNA damage can sense trouble and will kill themselves rather than live with malfunctions. This self-sacrifice can spare the body trouble in small doses, but if too many cells die at once, whole organ systems might shut down. Combined with intense burns, these shutdowns led to many deaths in Japan, and some of the victims who didn’t die immediately probably wished they had. Survivors remember seeing people’s fingernails fall off whole, dropping from their fists like dried shell pasta. They remember human-sized “dolls of charcoal” slumped in alleys. Someone recalled a man struggling along on two stumps, holding a charred baby upside down. Another recalled a shirtless woman whose breasts had burst “like pomegranates.”
During his torment in the air-raid shelter in Nagasaki, Yamaguchi – bald, boily, feverish, half deaf – nearly joined this list of casualties. Only dedicated nursing by his family pulled him through. Some of his wounds still required bandages and would for years. But overall he traded Job’s life for something like Samson’s: his sores mostly healed, his strength returned, his hair grew back. He began working again, first at Mitsubishi, later as a teacher. And despite his double exposure, Yamaguchi lived all the way until 2010, sixty-five extra years, finally dying of stomach cancer at ninety-three.
Culled from: The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
Morbid Video Du Jour!
|
|
