On August 6, 1945, engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima, Japan, on a business trip when the first atomic bomb detonated just two miles away, leaving him with severe burns and temporary blindness. He miraculously survived, dragged himself to the railway station, and caught a train back to his hometown of Nagasaki. Three days later, while describing the horror of the blast to his skeptical boss, the second atomic bomb detonated outside his office window, making him a double atomic blast survivor.

Yamaguchi's unbelievable survival became a haunting global symbol of the atomic age. His experiences heavily influenced post-war Japanese literature and 'Genbaku' (atomic bomb) poetry, a searing literary genre that utilized raw, visceral verse to warn the world against the terrifying threat of nuclear apocalypse.