On August 9, 1945, a man wrapped in bandages told his boss that a single bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. His boss said he'd gone mad. Then the window filled with white light. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a 29-year-old Mitsubishi ship designer from Nagasaki, sent to Hiroshima for a three-month job. On August 6, his last day, he realized he'd forgotten his hanko, the name stamp he needed to sign out, and went back for it alone. Walking past potato fields, he looked up and saw a B-29 drop two small parachutes. "It was like a flash of magnesium," he said, "and I was blown over." The bomb exploded about 3 kilometers away. His eardrums burst, and his face and arms were burned. He crossed the burning city with two surviving colleagues, spent the night in a shelter, and caught a train home to Nagasaki. On August 9, still bandaged, he went back to work and told his director what one bomb had done. "A single bomb can't destroy a whole city," the director said. "I think you've gone a little mad." At 11:02 a.m., the flash came again, about 3 kilometers away once more. He survived that too. For years he barely spoke about it. In 2009, Japan officially recognized him as a survivor of both bombings, the only person ever given that status. He spent his last years speaking against nuclear weapons. "The reason that I hate the atomic bomb," he said, "is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings." He died in 2010, at 93. Some call him the unluckiest man in history. He spent his life making sure nobody forgot what he saw. Disclaimer: Distances are approximate. The forgotten stamp, the scenes and the quotes come from his own accounts, mainly a 2005 interview with The Times. At least 160 people, including his two colleagues, are believed to have survived both bombs, but he is the only one officially recognized. Photos: Matsumoto Eiichi; Yoshito Matsushige; unknown photographers (Mitsubishi Nagasaki dockyard and Urakami, Nagasaki, 1945); Fg2 (A-Bomb Dome); all public domain, via Wikimedia Commons