Nagasaki bomb survivor Alistair Urquhart dies aged 97 Published duration 10 October 2016 Related Topics World War Two

image copyright Gordon Highlanders Museum image caption Alistair Urquhart was a prisoner-of-war

A former prisoner-of-war who credited the Nagasaki atomic bomb with saving his life has died at the age of 97.

Gordon Highlander Alistair Urquhart said the bomb prevented a Japanese plan to massacre Allied PoWs.

He was blown off his feet by the Nagasaki bomb in 1945. That, and the Hiroshima atomic bomb killed up to 250,000 people, but are credited with hastening the end of World War Two.

Aberdeen-born Mr Urquhart, of Broughty Ferry, died in a Dundee care home.

His story began when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942.

Serving with the Gordon Highlanders' Second Battalion he had arrived there just weeks earlier as the Allies strengthened the island fortress against the expected invasion.

media caption A former Japanese POW tells how he survived slave labour in camps, being torpedoed by the Americans and the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki

He was among thousands taken prisoner and ended up helping to build the notorious Burma-Siam railway.

Mr Urquhart's detail was put to work in what became known as "Hellfire Pass", where men were forced to cut through solid rock using nothing more than hand tools and dynamite.

An estimated 13,000 Allied PoWs died on the railway. When it was completed, the surviving prisoners were taken back to Singapore to be put on ships to Japan.

The Americans, not knowing the cargo, torpedoed them. The ship Mr Urquhart was on sank.

'Thank God'

For five days he drifted on the ocean in a raft, until he was picked up by a whaler.

He ended up in a labour camp 10 miles from Nagasaki where, on 9 August 1945, the second atomic bomb exploded.

He recalled: "I heard a plane, and I looked up. And it was quite clearly an American plane. No opposition.

image copyright Gordon Highlanders Museum image caption The Second Battalion is pictured en route for Singapore

"And it just droned over and away.

"Minutes later, I was just blown across the pathway - a big gust, which I thought was wind, hot air. But this was the bomb going off.

"There had been a directive from the Japanese Army that if the Americans put one foot on Japanese soil, the whole of the people who had been taken prisoner had to be massacred on 12 August.

"When was the bomb dropped? 9 August. Thank God. And here I am."

'Full life'

The Japanese surrendered nine days after the first blast, ending World War Two.

Mr Urquhart's son, Philip, said: "My father passed away peacefully with his family and friends around him on Friday.

"He only moved into the care home in February having looked after himself up to the age of 96 and he was happy there.

"He was 97 when he died so we cannot say he did not have a full life."