A lot of people don't live that long even without exposure to radiation or coal dust.
If my father was any indication, he came out of WW2 and the Korean War with a vast appreciation for being alive. That had a positive effect on the rest of his life, and he passed at 93.
"late 80s" there would be more likely to refer to "in the years 1987-1989 or so" than to "at an age of 87-89".
If I told a story about my own grandfather's service in World War II in the Seabees (by happenstance he was also a coal miner as a civilian), I'd be likely to get something wrong, not out of intention to mislead, but just that I pieced together the story in my own memories in a certain way when I was told the stories as a young boy. I may mix in details from my other grandfather's service or a great-grandfather's time.
Then, weigh that against a non-native speaker's chance to use a common English idiom "in the late 80s" in a non-standard way and against the chance that someone would express some negative interpretation of someone passing in their late 80s as being perhaps related to radiation exposure and black lung.
It's all speculation for all of us except one. ;)
I don't know the story all that well because this is all stories from decades ago. The person who knew it best currently has dementia.
(Wish HN had the ability to edit a comment from 5 hrs ago.)
Sorry for the dumb question, but...
He was in his 60s during WWII when he was captured?
Your grandpa was lucky to have lived through it. The Japanese were preparing to execute all slave prisoners of war in anticipation of the main island campaigns.[1] I think if the nukes had waited another month or two there would have been tens of thousands of allied POWs that never would have made it home.
1. Happy to lookup/provide links if requested. What immediately comes to mind is the story of Louis Zamperini which was captured in the 2014 movie "Unbroken". The book covers how close they all came to extinction (and is also much better than the movie) Also https://www.quora.com/Near-the-end-of-the-war-did-Japan-plan...
Thanks and appreciation to him as well for his service to his country and to the defeat of tyranny during the second world war.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Many people from thousands of kilometers away, liberated the Netherlands from Germany...
[0]>"In places that have never threatened him, his family or his people. If not for imperial interests, [...]"
> On December 8, 1941, the Netherlands declared war on the Japanese Empire.[35] On January 10, 1942 the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).
Analogously, Indonesia should be grateful to the Japanese for traveling thousands of kilometers to liberate them from the Dutch Netherlands.
Experience of the occupation varied considerably, depending upon where one lived and one's social position. Many who lived in areas considered important to the war effort experienced torture, sex slavery, arbitrary arrest and execution, and other war crimes. Many thousands of people were taken away from Indonesia as forced labourers (romusha) for Japanese military projects, including the Burma-Siam and Saketi-Bayah railways, and suffered or died as a result of ill-treatment and starvation. Between four and 10 million romusha in Java were forced to work by the Japanese military.[22] About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia, Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_the_Dut...
Later they moved the POW labor to Nagasaki. They were kept on the outskirts of the city so were safe but still witnessed the second blast. When it happened, the house they were in collaped on him.
He had fought the Boer War for the Dutch. Even captured the regiment that Churchil was with, but luckily released them.
Later in WW2, he fought to protect the Dutch colony in Indonesia from the Japanese - but lost, e.g. the nuclear experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As far as health effects go, he seem to have suffered effects of radiation and also black lung from all of the coal mining. He died in the late 80s and the story in my family goes like this:
Some government scientists showed up at the house to ask his wife if they could autopsy him for research. Later, when the results were given to my family, we found out that all of his bones were slightly blue-tinted and curved. It is not suspected that this strange effect on his skeleton was caused by the radiation exposure, and that the mysterious pain he constantly experienced was a result of this odd deformation.