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A 93-YEAR-OLD Japanese man has been officially recognised as the only person to have survived two nuclear bombs.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi is either the luckiest - or the unluckiest - man alive.

He was in Hiroshima on a business trip when American bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945.

Three days later, the bomb that ended World War II flattened his home town of Nagasaki as he recovered from his injuries.

Incredibly, the retired oil tanker designer's only lasting injury was to be left slightly deaf in one ear.

He said: "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 due to leave Hiroshima just before the bomb was dropped but returned to a city centre office to retrieve something he had left behind.

He remembers hearing the Enola Gay circling above.

Within seconds, he was knocked off his feet by the force of the blast as "Little Boy" detonated with a blinding flash and a deafening boom.

He lived, while 140,000 other people who were in the city that morning died either instantly or over the coming months.

Yamaguchi suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night stumbling around the city.

Shortly after he made it home, another US B-29 bomber dropped "Fat Man" on Nagasaki which, like Hiroshima, was an important industrial and military base.

He, his wife and baby son survived, while about 70,000 others died.

They spent the following week in a shelter near what was left of their home.

His son has since died of cancer, aged 59.

Japanese records show dozens of people experienced the blast in Hiroshima only to be exposed to radiation in Nagasaki.

But Yamaguchi is the first to have been at ground zero when both explosions occurred.

Nagasaki city official Toshiro Miyamoto said: "It's such an unfortunate case but it is possible that there are more people like him."

Certification qualifies survivors for compensation, including monthly allowances, free medical check-ups and funeral costs.

DOUBLE DEVASTATION

HIROSHIMA

Attacked: August 6, 1945.

Killed: 140,000 people, almost all civilians.

Bomb: Codenamed Little Boy, it was made with uranium-235 and created an 18-kiloton blast.

It was dropped by the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets.

NAGASAKI

Attacked: August 9, 1945.

Killed: 70,000 people, almost all civilians.

Bomb: Codenamed Fat Man, it was made mainly of plutonium-239 and created a 21-kiloton blast.

It was dropped by the B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.