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Missing a train saved Tetsuko's life. 140,000 others weren't so lucky

Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here It was a sunny morning on August 6, 1945, when Tetsuko and her friend decided to take a train to go see a movie. The 16-year-old and her friend from the Japanese city of Kure had just missed a train and had to wait more than an hour for the next one. Tetsuko McKenzie was 16 when Hiroshima was bombed. (Tetsuko McKenzie) "We were mucking around on the platform, and there was a strong ray of light," she told "I said to my friend 'Oh my gosh, what is it?'" Tetsuko had no idea that their destination had been destroyed in an instant. And if they had managed to catch the train they wanted, they would have been in the middle of Hiroshima when the atomic bomb hit. She and her friend watched a giant white cloud emerging from behind the hills, "gradually getting bigger". Still mystified, they got on the next train heading to Hiroshima. But three stops away, the train was stopped and turned around. At that point, nobody in Japan knew what had happened. An estimated 140,000 people were killed when an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. (Supplied) While many Japanese cities had been devastated by US bombings during World War II, there was nothing like this. An estimated 140,000 people were killed in the bombing, and the city was effectively wiped off the map. Tetsuko and her friend had to walk back to Kure on foot, until they were able to hitch a ride on a Navy ute. Tetsuko McKenzie came to Melbourne after marrying an Australian. (Tetsuko McKenzie) "My parents were really, really overjoyed to see me," she said. "They thought I was gone." After the war, Tetsuko got a job as a maid for Australian general Horace Robertson, who was head of the British Occupation Force in Japan. It was there she met her future husband Ray McKenzie, an Australian corporal working for the general. She and her husband moved to Australia in 1953. With Australians struggling to pronounce Tetsuko, she quickly became known as Tess. Eighty years on, the now 96-year-old lives in Melbourne. Hiroshima Japan World War II World Melbourne CONTACT US