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Jacket Worn by A-Bomb Survivor

From the collection of Museon (Museum of Science and Culture), The Hague

h 124 cm x w 53 cm 
1945

A flash and a deafening rumble. On 9 August 1945, the American Air Force exploded an atomic bomb 500 metres above Nagasaki. The Japanese city was wiped away, 39,000 people died and 25,000 were wounded.

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On 9 August 1945 at 11:02 am, an atomic bomb destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki (source: Beeldbank WO2 – NIOD).
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Three days earlier, the Americans had also dropped an A-bomb on Hiroshima, but Japan still refused to surrender. A Dutch prisoner of war, J. van Houten, who had been deployed to work in a shipyard near Nagasaki owned by Mitsubishi, fled with his fellow prisoners to the hills surrounding the burning city. There was no time to grab anything. Van Houten was not wearing a shirt and it got very cold that evening. To his surprise, out of the blue, he heard a young Japanese soldier ask ‘Tsumetai ka?’, which means more or less: ‘Are you cold?’ When he responded yes, the soldier gave him this raincoat.

After a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 and the Second World War came to an end.