YOU hear a lot of strange stories in this job but not many as unlikely as this: a man who considers himself to be lucky because he was buried alive almost 60 years ago.

Because, above his head, an atomic bomb exploded, killing, burning and maiming thousands of people and turning a huge industrial city into a wasteland.

Had he not been buried in a trench under tons of rubble, on that day in Nagasaki, Japan, Ron Bryer would not be about to celebrate his 82nd birthday in quiet retirement in Settle.

And as his wife of 56 years, Pat, says: "He's always had someone up there looking after him."

In many ways, Ron was lucky even to have become a prisoner of war in Japan, for his first scrape with death came at the tender age of three.

Born at a pub-cum-farm, the Radcliffe Arms at Follifoot, near Harrogate, he managed to fall head first into a barrel used as a drinking trough by livestock.

A young neighbour passing by saw his feet thrashing about in the air and pulled him clear. Tragically, that neighbour was later killed in a motorcycle accident.

World War Two had broken out when Ron left school and he volunteered for the RAF. He was sent to London to train in radio communications and, during the Blitz, was a firewatcher at night, reporting fires and falling bombs.

"You went up on high roofs with bombs and incendiaries falling all around you," he recalls. "Some nights, the Germans dropped landmines on parachutes and you learned to keep your head down. When they went off, they actually took chunks out of the sky-line."

Although he didn't know it, he had just learned another life-saving lesson.

His luck held again, in a strange sort of way, when he was eventually posted to Singapore, which fell to the Japanese just before his boat docked. Not many of the British servicemen lived to tell the tale of the horrendous captivity that followed - thousands were starved, beaten or worked to death in slave labour camps.

Instead, Ron's ship was diverted to Java - but the Japanese were already gaining control there too. After a week smashing their way through the jungles, they tipped their lorries over a cliff - and were then captured by a Japanese patrol.

It was the beginning of almost three years of slave labour, first in Java, then on the Japanese mainland where he became a riveter in the giant Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki.

Early in August 1945, the US air force launched a massive air raid with high explosive bombs on the shipyard. Ron's camp, three miles away, was severely damaged - which also turned out to be a stroke of good fortune.

For on August 9, Ron was repairing a slit trench when he heard the sound of a single bomber. He looked up and saw a giant B27 Flying Fortress drop what appeared to be a large bomb attached to a parachute.

Remembering those Luftwaffe landmines, he ducked down to the bottom of the trench. The light turned purple - "the colour of a welding torch" - the ground shook and the hut next door was blown down, burying Ron under a pile of bricks, timber and earth.

"When I came to, everything was dark," he told me. "I managed to dig myself out and realised that the whole area was covered in dense smoke. When it eventually cleared, Nagasaki had disappeared - only the ruins were smouldering."

Ron has described the horrendous aftermath in his book, the White Nights of Nagasaki, but I will not to go into those details: they are too horrific. The Japanese surrendered soon afterwards.

By the time he got home, via the Pacific and America, he had put on so much weight that no one recognised him - "after almost three years of near starvation, it is amazing how much food you can put away".

His head had been shaved, but was growing back in tufts, so he was not the most pre-possessing sight when he first met Pat at a party.

"But despite all he had gone through, Ron made me laugh - and still does today," she says. They married in 1947 and moved to Settle in 1965 when Ron, by then a trained engineer, helped build the local creamery, now owned by Arla Foods. He became the chief engineer of both the Settle and the East Marton dairies until he retired at the age of 65.

Since then, what many may consider even stranger things have happened. The couple have made friends with some of the Japanese who were working in the shipyard and have visited that country twice as honoured guests.

"So you have forgiven the Japanese," I ventured, somewhat stupidly. "Forgiven them?" he almost snapped. "I never condemned them. They live in a different culture to ours and, by their rules, what they did was correct."

Lucky man, Ron Bryer. And a thoughtful one too.