Tsutomu Yamaguchi.
That's right. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the kind of guy that made you want to stop worrying and embrace the bomb. If more of us lived the kind of lives that Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived, we wouldn't need universal health care reform.
I first met Tsutomu when I was freelancing for the Guinness Book of World Records as an imaginary fact checker. This was in 1967 when it seemed like every aging blind Nip who was losing his hair and his mother was trying to lay claim to being the sole survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I caught up with this son of a Harbor Bomber on Fishmerman's Wharf in San Franscisco where the wizened junior high school teacher was vacationing as part of a cross-cultural awareness program for wogs and zipperheads who joined our side in the rebuilding effort by volunteering as translators and corpse carriers.
Mr. Yamaguchi was working with a shipbuilding company and visiting in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 when the crew of the Enola Gay, on orders from God and Harry Truman, delivered a liberating payload on suicidal city. He sustained only minor life-threatening burns to his upper torso and the partial loss of vision in both eyes.
Despite all the horse exhaust you hear from the liberals about how bad we were for dropping bombs on these unarmed Jap civilians, the fact is dozens of people like Tsutomu managed to survive what some thought to be certain annihilation, and doesn't that make you wonder how many other so-called atrocities we've committed over the years were really all that bad. I know I'm more skeptical than ever.
Obviously, it wasn't that bad for Mr. Yamaguchi who managed to get home to his beloved Nagasaki in time to survive a second blast on August 9, again suffering only the loss of his left eye, ruptured ear drums, and a mild case of stomach cancer that didn't prove fatal until yesterday when the Guinness Record Holder for Being in the Absolute Worst Wrong Place at the Wrong Time passed away while drinking an India Pale Ale and listening to Rush Limbaugh. He was 93.
Hell, how many Americans die every year in their 20s and 30s without even living through a single bombing raid, let alone getting nailed with an A-bomb? Can you name me one person in your neighborhood who has even opened a letter contained powdered anthrax? All I'm saying is I'm willing to get my ass blown away in a nuclear wind if I could live to be 90 and listen to Rush Limbaugh while getting plastered on good beer. Wouldn't you?