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The Luckiest or Unluckiest Man in the World? Tsutomu Yamaguchi, double A-bomb victim

[A NOTE ON COMMENTS: I encourage vigorous debate, and this is a subject which provokes strong and divergent views. My policy has been to post every comment, regardless of content. But from now on I'm not going to put up any which contain obscenity, racist language, and personal invective about other commenters. They will be deleted.]

[Kyodo reported yesterday that Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the handful of people to survive the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has finally been recognised as such by the Nagasaki local government. Four years ago, shortly before the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, I interviewed Mr Yamaguchi, and two of his fellow double-hibakusha, over the course of several days. Here is the long piece which I wrote about them for the Times Magazine. See below a photograph of Mr Yamaguchi next to a replica of the "Fat Man", by an outsanding photographer, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, who has also blogged on our assigment here.]

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato are either the luckiest or the unluckiest men alive, and after three days in their company and long hours of conversation, I still had no idea which. It is sixty years since their monstrous ordeal and all three are well into their ninth decade. Mr Sato, who is 86, uses a wheelchair after injuring his back, and 89-year old Mr Yamaguchi is almost deaf in one ear. But all of them exude the dignified vigour of elderly Japanese, the world’s healthiest and longest living race. “I was a heavy smoker,” Mr Yamaguchi told me during our first meeting, “but I gave up smoking and drinking when I was 50. I didn’t expect to live to 80. And now I’m well over 80.” The miracle is not that he is alive now, but that he made it past the age of 29.

Mr Yamaguchi and his friends are freaks of history, victims of a fate so callous and improbable that it almost raises a smile. In 1945, they were working in Hiroshima where the world’s first atomic bomb exploded 60 years ago this morning, on 6 August 1945. 140,000 people died as a result of the explosion; by pure chance, Mr Yamaguchi, Mr Sato and Mr Iwanaga, were spared. Stunned and injured, reeling from the horrors around them, they left the city for the only place they could have gone – their home town, Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west. There, on 9th August, the second atomic bomb exploded over their heads.

In a century of mass killing, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of a new age. The end of the world was transformed from an imaginative notion, the fancy of poets and prophets, into a real and living possibility. Three men survived the beginning of the end of the world, not once, but twice. Sixty years later, all three of them are alive.

Particle Plague: Hay Fever in Japan

[It's the beginning of one of the two most beautiful times of the year in Japan. But out on the Musashi Plain, the cedar trees are vomiting forth clouds of pollen. Times readers will have seen my important story last week about how, as well 32 million humans, Japan's Snow Monkeys are being tormented by the pollen allergy. Here is a piece I wrote for the Independent a few years ago about life with kafunsho.]

It begins as it does every year in this season: on the first of the sunny days of March, I am woken from sleep when, with a brief tickle of warning, my nose explodes. Between bed and bathroom, I sneeze another half a dozen times; by the time I've got my hands on a piece of tissue paper, my nose is drooling and my eyes feel as if they are being gently buffed with sandpaper. I have had only one other experience like it - six years ago, when I caught a dose of the notoriously powerful tear gas used by the South Korean riot police. This is peaceful Tokyo, but for these few weeks - between the first of the spring sunshine and the passing of the cherry blossom - it is takes on the look of a place under chemical and biological attack.

Outside, people wear white surgical masks over their mouths and noses; even those with perfect eyesight have wide protective spectacles. Salarymen weep into their newspapers; office ladies fumble with nose sprays and eyedrops. For this is the season of hay fever, and across Tokyo millions of people are suffering like me.

British Minister: Global Warming Could Bring War

[Here's a fuller version my piece from today's paper, which ran rather small . . .]

Global warming will increase the risk of war, conflict and terrorism and represents perhaps the greatest challenge to stability and security in the world, the British foreign office minister, Bill Rammell warned an international gathering yesterday.

Speaking at a conference on climate change and security in Tokyo, Mr Rammell said that climate change could ruin livelihoods, force entire populations out of their homes, and pitch poor nations against rich ones, increasing competition for land, food and resources. He predicted a ten-fold increase in piracy as suffering populations seized scarce resources form the high seas, and increased radicalisation of impoverished people leading to future terrorist attacks.

“Who, hand on heart, can say for sure that countries wouldn’t decide to use armed force to ensure that their citizens had access to life-giving resources taken away by their neighbours?’ he asked the audience of politicians, military officers and defence officials from Britain and Japan. “It’s not difficult to imagine how the ‘have-nots’ could be radicalised by someone saying, ‘Those rich western countries created global warming, and now they are buying up the world’s food stocks, leaving us to starve.’

He added: “We know all too well that it doesn’t take many radicals to disrupt our way of life – and that borders, or even oceans, are no barrier to those bent on killing innocent people and damaging our way of life.”

The Cost of Everything

Wednesday's paper contained my piece about an experience, familar in Japan, which seems to be about to impose itself upon Britain: living with deflation.

One reader complains that I must have got it all wrong - on a visit to Japan in December, Peter of Phuket reports, everything was "horrendously expense". This is a natural misunderstanding. For, while the cost of living for Japanese has unquestionably remained very stable, for short term visitors, and those of us long-termers who are paid in sterling, it depends not on inflation or deflation, but on the foreign exchange rate.

If you spend yen purchased with pounds then you are the slave of an exchange rate which changes day by day. When the British currency is strong, you get lots of yen for each of your pounds, and Japan is cheap. When the pound is weak, the opposite is the case.

Since the financial crisis last autumn, the pound has been weak. Not just a little tired, or even rather exhausted, but completely shagged out and barely able to open its lips and croak for help. Against the yen it is lower than it has been for thirty years. For those of us spending sterling, the effect is dramatic.

In 2007 one pound bought ¥235 (on average - some of the time it was higher still). As of this writing, according to XE.com, it is worth ¥133 yen (and the rate actually offered by a credit card company or high street bank is worse still). In other words the pound is worth 57 per cent of what it used to be. Which is to say that anyone paid in pounds has experienced a 43 per cent pay cut.

I don't like to whinge, but this kind of thing really concentrates the mind. A few examples:

The love that dares to squeak its name

Happy Valentine's Day from Tokyo.

My own small attempt to stand against the tsunami of overpriced chocolate, unnecessary wrapping paper and merciless commercialism is below, a piece which also appears in this morning's paper here.

I had always assumed that Japan had the most nauseating Valentine's Day in the world. In researching this story, I learned that in South Korea it is far, far worse. They have taken Valentine's Day and White Day and added half a dozen more spurious Days of their own.

There was interesting sight on Omotesando Avenue this morning, just in front of Gap at the crossing with Meiji Dori, which I cack handedly photographed with my phone.

Apologies for the quality of this image. It shows a young man holding up a sign which reads in Japanese Give me chocolate. On his T-shirt, almost invisible in this picture, ate the English words No Wari.

Valentine's Day in Japan being the day when fanciable young chaps receive choco from their sweet hearts, I take him to be one of the Himote, the anti-Valentine's movement whom I describe below, engaged in a sarcastic act of satrical performance art.

Or perhaps he just had no girlfriend. And no chocolate. I hope he found some. None of the many, many passers-by paid him the least attention. But, true to his T-shirt slogan, it didn't seem to wari him at all.

Cluster bombs of the Secret War

Last week I made my first visit to the beautiful and neglected country of Laos to learn about these vicious objects:

. . . unexploded cluster bombs. My story appeared here in Saturday's Times. I attach a longer version below.

Thanks to the many people who helped to organise the trip. Those interested in learning more about the issue can look at their various websites.

I was invited by the International Committee of the Red Cross which is campaigning for an outright ban on all cluster munitions. Our host were the Lao government's National Regulatory Authority UXO and Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme which struggles on bravely in the face of an impossible task. The United Nations Development Programme also supports demining in the country.

A fascinating part of the story, which I had too little space to dwell on in my piece, is the effort by the Lao government and UNESCO to aquire World Heritage Status for the  Plain of Jars, a beautiful and mysterious archaeological site which, in my view, was plainly constructed by extraterrestrials.

I encountered two NGOs doing valuable work in Laos - the Mines Advisory Group (which tries to defuse the cluster bombs before they go off), and COPE Laos (which helps the victims after they do). In this picture, Joe Pereira of COPE displays some of the prosthetic limbs which the organisation makes for injured Laos.

All these photographs were shot for the ICRC by the excellent Vientiane-based photographer, Jim Holmes.

Continue reading for my story . . .

The Saffron Revolution?

"It is a fascinating moment, fraught with promise, when this spirit of the times, dozing pitifully and apathetically, like a huge wet bird on a branch, suddenly and without a clear reason ... takes off in bold and joyful flight. We all hear the shush of this flight. It stirs our imagination and gives us energy: we begin to act."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Read: 'Nuns join Saffron Revolution'

Man of the moment

Below I attach my piece about Homer "Yasuo Fukuda" Simpson from this morning's paper. It's written in the assumption that he will defeat Julie "Taro Aso" Walters in Sunday's LDP presidential election, and such assumptions can be very dangerous, of course. But the only thing that could stop Mr Fukuda now would be a full-scale three-in-a-bed, coke'n'tarts sex scandal. I think we can agree that he is not the type. (Aso, on the other hand . . .)

My first assumption was that Fukuda's reluctance was just a pose, a conventional piece of pseudo-humility. Now, though, I'm persuaded by it. I think that he genuinely didn't particularly want to be prime minister. Whether that is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen.

[Thanks to Camera Otoko, Fi-Wi and Sarah for Homer and Julie.]

A pink oasis in the rush hour

I rarely have to leave home early enough to travel during Tokyo’s notorious rush hour, and for this blessing I thank the Shinto gods. We’ve all heard the ghastly stories: about the station staff whose job it is literally to squeeze commuters onto the trains; about carriages so packed that they would choke a sardine; and about the notorious chikan, or gropers, whose filthy fingers inflict misery on female passengers. So it was with trepidation that I rose early the other morning for the 7.30 Tube journey to work.

The train was on the platform as I bounded down the escalator, and the doors were closing as I slipped between them. I gripped the overhead strap and buried my nose in my newspaper. And quickly I became aware of something that surprised me – that travelling on the Tokyo subway in the rush hour isn’t half bad.

There were none of the discomforts I had anticipated, and in several ways the journey was positively pleasant. Instead of a fetor of armpits and bad breath, the carriage was infused with a light haze of perfume. It was certainly full, but there were no arms poking my ribcage – in fact, my fellow passengers seemed to be going to some trouble to make space for me. A few them, it’s true, looked a bit unfriendly – but at least they weren’t shedding dandruff over my jacket or exhaling last night’s saké into my face. It was only when the guard arrived and firmly escorted me off the train that I understood the explanation for all this – they were all women.

'The Tide is High'

Anyone interested in the plight of the Carteret Islands should look at a podcast by the estimable Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, with whom I travelled there last December. Beautiful images and an interesting commentary, including interviews with the Carteret islanders themselves.

The picture above was taken on the fishing boat which took us over to the islands. Jeremy is on the right.