shot down, torpedoed and the nuked for good measure

[InsaneApache]

Nagasaki honours only Briton
By Adam Fresco and Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo

THE family of the only British serviceman known to have been killed by the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki has given permission for his name to be included on a memorial.

On Friday The Times reported on Shigeaki Mori, an historian who survived the Hiroshima bomb as an eight-year-old, and his search for the family of Ronald Shaw, an RAF corporal. Mr Mori needed the assent of Corporal Shaw’s relatives to have his name added to the list of victims kept in the Peace Park at Nagasaki and wanted this done in time for the 60th anniversary of the bombings in August.

After the article appeared, Geoff Worland, a nephew of Corporal Shaw, was located and said that he would be very proud to have his uncle’s name added to the memorial. Mr Worland, 64, from Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, said: “I was a baby when he died, but my grandmother and his sister, my mum, were all very close and his story has been passed down the generations. His family thought he was missing in action and didn’t find out he had died until 1948. All we knew was that he had been taken prisoner.”

Mr Worland’s account adds detail to the extraordinary catalogue of misfortunes that befell Corporal Shaw, from Edmonton, North London, during his military career. He was an engine fitter at the RAF base at Kalidjati on the island of Java, now Indonesia. On the way to to Java, his aircraft was shot down and he was the only survivor. He was taken to hospital before being captured by the Japanese.

In 1944 he was on his way to Japan, but the transport ship was sunk, almost certainly by an Allied torpedo. After being rescued, he was taken to Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands. In August 1945 he was working in the Mitsubishi shipyard in the centre of Nagasaki. The atom bomb dropped by the American B29 Bock’s Car exploded a few hundred metres away and he was killed by falling masonry.

How unlucky can you get? At least his name will be added to the memorial in Nakasaki....

[Nelson]

How unlucky can you get?

That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, how many people survived being shot down and then sunk AND being a captive of the Japanese for years. Until the Bomb got him he was on a comparatively lucky streak.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

A very lucky man with an unlucky end.