Much was written in the last week about Joe Berti, who finished the Boston Marathon shortly before the bombs went off, then went home to Texas, where he witnessed the fertilizer explosion that devastated the town of West. Being in the midst of two such horrific incidents is a remarkable coincidence, but it pales in comparison to what Tsutomu Yamaguchi experienced.
On August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was on the final day of a business trip in Hiroshima, Japan, when the US dropped the first atomic bomb. The blast ruptured his ear drums, temporarily blinded him, and burned half of the top of his body, but he survived. The next day, he returned to him hometown for treatment, and then went back to his office. Unfortunately, his office was in Nagasaki, where the US dropped the second atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. He was 29 at the time.
But the story doesn't end there. While approximately 200,000 people died in the two cities, Yamaguchi survived both atomic blasts (one of only about 160), and lived to the ripe old age of 93.