He was on his way to the train station when he remembered that he forgot something at his Hiroshima office. He turned around and went back to get it. At 8:45 in the morning on August 6th, the first atomic bomb in history fell on Hiroshima. Yamaguchi was on his way to the train station for the second time, when the bomb fell.
The bomb was only 3 kilometers away.
He saw a big flash in the sky and heard a very loud noise. The power of the bomb knocked him down. Suddenly he couldn’t see and his ears were badly hurt. He was also badly burned on the left side of his body. He couldn’t walk, so he crawled to a shelter.
The next day, on August 7th, he traveled 300 kilometers home to Nagasaki.
On August 8th, he went to a doctor and got help for his burns. He was still badly hurt, but on August 9th he returned to work.
His boss couldn’t believe his story about one bomb destroying the whole city of Hiroshima. As he was explaining what happened, the second atomic bomb in history fell on Nagasaki.
Again, he was only 3 kilometers away from the bomb. He said he felt the atomic bomb was following him.
Luckily, this time he was not hurt by the bomb blast, but he did get exposed to poisonous radiation for the second time.
Yamaguchi lived a long life, but he and his family suffered a lot from the effects of the bomb. Yamaguchi lost hearing in his left ear for the rest of his life and for many years he had to wear bandages for his burns. He lived to the age of 83, but he and his wife both experienced many radiation related diseases. Even his children, who were born after the bomb, suffered from health problems caused by radiation.
They suffered from health problems caused by radiation.
Later in life Yamaguchi became an activist against nuclear weapons.
He believed that God chose him to experience the bomb twice.
He believed it was his fate to experience both atomic bombs, so he could teach people about the dangers of nuclear weapons.
What do you think of these stories? Yamaguchi used his experiences to teach many people about the dangers of nuclear war, but was it just chance for him to be in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki on those days? Or was it fate for him to experience the only two atomic bombs in history? Was he incredibly unlucky or was he incredibly lucky to have survived? Was it all just a coincidence? What about the two Lauras? Is their story also a story of random chance or fate?
Some people think everything is random.
Imagine you are a single blade of grass, surrounded by millions of blades of grass just like you. One day a golf ball lands on your head. You might think, Why me? Why has this terrible thing happened to me? Of all the millions of blades of grass, why me?”
You might think that the golf ball hitting you was fate. Now imagine you are a golfer. You hit the golf ball and watch it fall on a blade of grass. Do you think, “Why did my golf ball hit that blade of grass? Of all the millions of blades of grass, why has this happened to that blade of grass? It must be fate.” Or do you think there is no meaning to where the ball landed? It was just random chance. Is life full of meaning or randomness? Do you see fate or chance in life’s coincidences?