"A former prisoner-of-war who credited the Nagasaki atomic bomb with saving his life has died at the age of 97. Gordon Highlander Alistair Urquhart said the bomb prevented a Japanese plan to massacre Allied PoWs. He was blown off his feet by the Nagasaki bomb in 1945. That, and the Hiroshima atomic bomb killed up to 250,000 people, but are credited with hastening the end of World War Two. Aberdeen-born Mr Urquhart, of Broughty Ferry, died in a Dundee care home. His story began when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942. Serving with the Gordon Highlanders' Second Battalion he had arrived there just weeks earlier as the Allies strengthened the island fortress against the expected invasion. He was among thousands taken prisoner and ended up helping to build the notorious Burma-Siam railway. Mr Urquhart's detail was put to work in what became known as "Hellfire Pass", where men were forced to cut through solid rock using nothing more than hand tools and dynamite. An estimated 13,000 Allied PoWs died on the railway. When it was completed, the surviving prisoners were taken back to Singapore to be put on ships to Japan. The Americans, not knowing the cargo, torpedoed them. The ship Mr Urquhart was on sank. 'Thank God' For five days he drifted on the ocean in a raft, until he was picked up by a whaler. He ended up in a labour camp 10 miles from Nagasaki where, on 9 August 1945, the second atomic bomb exploded." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37606356
