Sumiteru Taniguchi

was a Japanese anti-nuclear activist and survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, who was chairman of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers.

Early life Taniguchi Sumiteru was born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1929. His mother died when he was a year and a half old. After this, his father decided to relocate elsewhere for work and ended up being a locomotive operator in Manchuria. Taniguchi and his two brothers went to live with his mother's family in Nagasaki where he was raised by his aunt. In early 1943, Taniguchi began working as a carrier for the Nishiura-Kami post office in Nagasaki. He continued this into 1945 when the nuclear explosion took place.

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki On the morning of 9 August 1945, the 16-year-old Taniguchi was approximately north from the hypocenter, delivering mail on his bicycle without a shirt on due to the warm summer weather, when "Fat Man" exploded in the sky over Urakami. The bomb's heat flash heavily injured Taniguchi with near instant burns resulting, but the blast that arrived afterward did not cause any severe injuries to him, as he clung to the ground while buildings were blown down around him. Heavy burns melted skin from his back and left arm, but Taniguchi states that he did not bleed or feel any pain due to the nerve endings being burned away. Tired and disoriented, he walked over to the tunnel of Mitsubishi Sumiyoshi Tunnel Arms Factory located about 200 meters away from where he was at the time of the blast, where a female survivor assisted in cutting off loose portions of skin and rubbed machine oil on his damaged arm.

Recovery Come nightfall, Taniguchi was carried to a hill to rest, where he was surrounded by confused and thirsty survivors. The next morning everyone but Taniguchi was dead. During the next two days rescue teams passed by without noticing him, as he was too weak to muster a call for help.

The color photograph(s) of Sumiteru Taniguchi's red back are from motion picture film taken by (attributed to) Lieutenant Herbert Sussan. Sergeant Joe O'Donnell took an earlier black and white photograph and this is included in his book, Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine's Photographs from Ground Zero. His wounds were not treated properly until 1960, however, and continued to cause him great physical discomfort until his death. The improper burn healing and to some degree the delayed stochastic effects of radiation exposure during and after the bombings manifested in the growth of numerous burn keloid tumors.

From 2007 until his death, Taniguchi had undergone ten surgeries to remove benign growths. Taniguchi also had multiple skin grafting surgeries on his back and left arm.

Activism Taniguchi devoted his life to informing people of the consequences of the 1945 atomic bombing and campaigning against nuclear proliferation. Taniguchi gave numerous interviews recounting his experiences and was featured in Steven Okazaki's 2007 documentary White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Death Taniguchi died of duodenal papilla cancer in Nagasaki on 30 August 2017 at the age of 88.