Sumiteru Taniguchi, who campaigned for nuclear disarmament after experiencing the US atomic bomb, has died of cancer

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A prominent nuclear disarmament campaigner who was delivering mail in Nagasaki when the US dropped an atomic bomb in 1945, has died at the age of 88.



Sumiteru Taniguchi, once considered a frontrunner for the Nobel peace prize, died of cancer at a hospital in the south-western Japanese city, according to Nihon Hidankyo, a group that represents survivors of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The then postman, who was 16 when the attack happened, suffered horrific burns to his back and left arm that took years to heal properly.

He had been riding his bicycle 1.1 miles (1.8 kilometres) from the centre of the blast.

“All of a sudden, after seeing a rainbow-like light from the back, I was blown by a powerful blast and smashed to the ground,” he said at a Nagasaki bombing commemoration ceremony in 2015. “When I woke up, the skin of my left arm from the shoulder to the tip of my fingers was trailing like a rag. I put my hand to my back and found my clothing was gone, and there was slimy, burnt skin all over my hand.

“Bodies burned black, voices calling for help from collapsed buildings, people with flesh falling off and their guts falling out ... This place became a sea of fire. It was hell.”

He became one of the few early faces of the bombing aftermath when US military pictures of him recovering in hospital, his entire back an agonising slab of melted flesh, were beamed around the world.

Taniguchi, who spent about three and a half years in hospital after the blast, went on to become a prominent disarmament campaigner, speaking in Japan and overseas about his experience.

“I fear that people, especially the younger generations, are beginning to lose interest,” he said in a 2003 interview with AFP. “I want the younger generations to remember that nuclear weapons will never save humanity. It is an illusion to believe that the nuclear umbrella will protect us.”

The US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 people. The toll includes those who survived the explosion itself but died soon after from severe radiation exposure.

Three days later, the US dropped a plutonium bomb on the port city of Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people.