Tokyo: Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognised as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of the Second World War, has died at age 93.
Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on August 6, 1945, when a US B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city.
He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 300 kilometres southwest, which suffered a second US atomic bomb attack three days later.
The mayor of Nagasaki said "a precious storyteller has been lost", in a message posted on the city's website Wednesday. Yamaguchi died on Monday morning of stomach cancer, the mass circulation Mainichi, Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers reported.
Yamaguchi was the only person to be certified by the Japanese government as having been in both cities when they were attacked, although other dual survivors have also been identified.
"My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die," Yamaguchi was quoted in the Mainichi newspaper last year.
In his later years, Yamaguchi gave talks about his experiences as an atomic bomb survivor and often expressed his hope that such weapons would be abolished.
He spoke at the United Nations in 2006, wrote books and songs about his experiences, and appeared in a documentary.
Last month he was visited by filmmaker James Cameron, director of Titanic and Avatar, who is considering making a movie about the bombings.
