Shuntaro Hida, Japanese physician, Died at 100

  Health care

Shuntaro Hida was born on January 1, 1917, and died on March 20, 2017.

He was a Japanese physician.

Hida was an eyewitness to the dropping of the Little Boy Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay on 6 August 1945.

Hida treated survivors as a medical doctor and wrote about the effects of radiation on the human body.

The night before the bomb was dropped 28-year-old Dr. Hida left the Hiroshima Military Hospital where he was stationed as an army medical officer to attend to a sick child in the village of Hesaka.

He was therefore approximately 6 kilometers from ground zero when the bomb was dropped and he looked up and saw the Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft which he described as appearing like a “tiny silver drop”.

Then, Shuntaro Hida felt the heat and blast from the explosion and saw the mushroom cloud over the city.

As a medical doctor, Hida treated the wounded and saw the short- and long-term effects of radiation on the human body.

Shuntaro Hida passed away at 100 years old.