Living Life By Example
This week saw the passing of 93-year old Tsutomu Yamaguchi.
On August 6, 1945, the 29-year-old young engineer was on a business trip in Hiroshima the day that the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city killing 80,000 people instantly. Less than two miles from ground zero, Yamaguchi survived the attack. With his body badly burned and the hearing in left ear all but gone, the young man focused on one thing – getting home to his wife and young son in a city 180 miles away. Yamaguchi stumbled through the once beautiful city where he witnessed the death and obliteration of the ancient Japanese city hoping to board a train leaving for his hometown.
Two days later, he successfully arrived home in Nagasaki where he tried to warn others of the destruction the attack caused – and while he argued with co-workers who refused to believe the seemingly exaggerated re-telling of the events in Hiroshima, the sky flashed a bright white – a second atomic bomb went off – this time over Nagasaki.
Many years later, Yamaguchi became renowned as one of only a handful of people who survived both atomic explosions – and the only one within 2 miles of each blast radius. Yamaguchi admits that he was despondent for months… but after his emotions of depression and anger faded, he decided to live his life differently. His goal was to empower children and anyone he could to buy into the principle that we know as “paying it forward.” It was his belief that in helping people, we create a better world and in a better world, violence and destruction could be avoided in the future.
Operation HOPE’s newest initiative FIVE MILLION KIDS – 5MK – attempts to embody that spirit of empowerment and dignity by finding creative solutions to stem high school drop-out rates. With a national drop-out rate of 30% that reaches 75% in some underserved communities, the 5MK initiative calls us all to action – as students, as parents, as mentors, as a community.
“I could have died on either of those days,” he told told reporters in August. “Everything that follows is a bonus.”
