Photo/Illutration Sumiteru Taniguchi shows a photo of himself six months after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki while giving a speech at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference in May 2010. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

NAGASAKI--Sumiteru Taniguchi was 16 and delivering mail when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

Although horrifically injured, he survived to speak out against nuclear weapons.

Seventy-eight years later, Taniguchi’s words rang from the mouth of Nagasaki’s Mayor Shiro Suzuki, as he delivered the Peace Declaration on the anniversary of the bombing.

Suzuki used a message from Taniguchi at the annual memorial ceremony because they share a concern that someday the world may forget that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

“People appear to be gradually forgetting the suffering of the past. This forgetfulness terrifies me. I fear that forgetfulness will lead to the acceptance of further atomic bombings,” said Taniguchi, who died in August 2017 at age 88.

Taniguchi suffered major burns on his back that kept him hospitalized for three years and seven months. He spent a year and nine months lying face down, which led to bed sores on his chest so severe that his bones became exposed.

Taniguchi once said of that experience, “When the treatment began, the pain was so excruciating that I spent every day yelling, ‘Kill me! Kill me!’”

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Keloid scars cover the back of Sumiteru Taniguchi in this photo taken in July 2005. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

About 20 years later, a photo of a young man with severe red burns covering his back was discovered in the United States. It was a photo of a young Taniguchi in the hospital.

Taniguchi would use that photo on numerous occasions when discussing the horrors he endured and calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Those scars and health aftereffects would haunt Taniguchi for the rest of his life. The skin on his back never returned to normal and, having lost his sweat glands, Taniguchi suffered in summer heat since he could not perspire to cool himself down.

Taniguchi developed keloids on his back that became hard and swelled and had to endure 20 surgeries to remove them. His wife applied ointment to his back to prevent chapping.

But through all this, Taniguchi never turned down requests to talk about his experience after the atomic bombing.

Although his back injuries never allowed him to recline comfortably in a chair, Taniguchi endured long flights to speak abroad on 25 occasions.

In May 2010, Taniguchi spoke at U.N. headquarters in New York during the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference. He held up the photo of himself lying face down on a hospital bed showing his red back.

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Sumiteru Taniguchi stands in Nagasaki Peace Park in April 2010. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

That was when he expressed his fear of the world’s forgetfulness.

“I am not a guinea pig," he added. "Of course, I am not something to be displayed. But for those of you who have seen what I once looked like, please do not avert your eyes, but look at my photo a second time.”

He pleaded, “Please make me the last hibakusha.”

Taniguchi concluded his speech in English, “No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki, no more hibakusha.”

In his Peace Declaration, Suzuki said Taniguchi’s concerns about forgetfulness seem very prescient because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine.

(This article was written by Mami Okada, Emika Terashima and Yusuke Ogawa.)

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