On August 6, 1945 the city of Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb.

On that Monday morning, 12-year-old Hiroyuki Yasunobu, had just arrived at Kure Elementary School when the white flash, and the mushroom cloud, and the firestorm, and the black rain occurred. Shielded from the blast by the concrete building, Hiroyuki survived the moment of impact. Being several kilometers away from the hypocenter, he was not burned by the blast’s thousand-degree temperatures, and he was not crushed by the blast’s enormous pressure. But, like everyone else in Hiroshima, he was hit by the supersonic shock-wave that blew across the landscape at 800 miles an hour. It reached him just ten seconds after detonation. Hiroyuki is my father-in-law. Today he is 78 years old.

The great sadness of Hiroyuki’s life was growing up lonely, because on August 6th all of his friends and classmates were killed by the bomb. In the days following the detonation, he searched through the grim wreckage of Hiroshima looking for anyone that he knew. He found no one.

In some unfathomable way, he pushed this great sadness down, deep below his consciousness, and he grew, with courage, into a hard worker, creating and running a business for five decades, loving and being loved by his family.