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NAGASAKI - The large framed color photograph shows stark reality.
The boy in the photo is lying face-down, apparently dead. His back, from
neck to waist, resembles raw meat.
Today, that boy is Nagasaki's leading nuclear disarmament champion.
Sumiteru Taniguchi, now 66, was the most critically injured person to survive
the atomic blast 50 years ago over this city.
Taniguchi holds a record he wishes he did not: He was hospitalized for three
years and seven months - longer than any other person injured by the detonation.
He was 16 years old that summer day and was scheduled to have that Thursday
morning off from his job at the telegraph office. But he had been called
to work.
As Taniguchi set off on his bicycle to deliver wire messages, an air raid
siren broke the morning quiet.
"I thought about going to a shelter, but soon the siren stopped. I
kept pedaling. Odd that I remember the sky was clear."
In the next instant, he was catapulted - bicycle and all - a dozen feet
and slapped against the road by a blast the color of rainbows.
"The ground seemed to quake and I clung to it for dear life."
When he raised his head, buildings were in ruin "and bodies of children
who had been playing at the roadside were scattered around me like clumps
of garbage.
"I thought I, too, was on the verge of death. But I spurred myself
to stay alive."
Minutes passed, perhaps an hour. Finally, Taniguchi stood up. As he did,
skin hung down from his left shoulder to fingertips.
"I touched my back with my other hand, and when I took it away, something
like black grease stuck to my fingers."
He looked around for his telegraph pouch and stumbled off, glancing back
at his prized bike, now twisted steel.
Nearby buildings were in flames and fires were breaking out on surrounding
hillsides.
"People who had survived were squirming in pain on the ground. Their
hair was gone, their faces puffed up."
He thought he was one of the lucky ones.
"I felt no pain and had no bleeding whatsoever. But I trudged along
like a sleepwalker to an arms factory that had operated in a tunnel and
sat down with others.
"The tunnel was full of injured people, but for some reason the horror
of the situation did not register on my mind.
"I asked a woman in the tunnel to cut off the skin flapping around
my arms. After doing so, she rubbed machine oil over the burns with the
remains of my shirt."
Those huddled in the tunnel feared another attack. "We had to leave,
but I no longer had the strength to stand up."
A man put Taniguchi on his back and carried him to a nearby hillside. Darkness
came, the night sky lit by fires raging below.
"From time to time, enemy aircraft roared overhead, spraying the ground
with fire."
Rain began to fall and he quenched his thirst by licking water from leaves.
When dawn broke, not one person around Taniguchi remained alive. Day came,
and a medical crew came to the hillside. But Taniguchi was too weak to call
out and no one saw him blink his eyes. They left him for dead.
The next afternoon, rescuers found him. By then, blood was dripping from
his back and he was in intense pain.
They carried him off the hill on a blanket to a temporary hospital, where
for the next month his burns were treated with a mixture of oil and paper
ashes.
In September, he was transferred to the Omura Navy Hospital. His strength
ebbed, his burns ran with pus and filled with maggots.
He lay face-down for the next 21 months, "crying out for someone to
kill me.
"No one expected me to survive. On their rounds every morning, doctors
and nurses whispered to each other, 'He's still alive.' "
At home, his parents, who escaped injury, planned his funeral.
For, in addition to the burns, lying face down caused massive bedsores to
form on his chest.
"Holes opened between my ribs and the movement of my heart and other
organs became visible through the skin."
In January 1946, U.S. Marine photographer Joe O'Donnell snapped Taniguchi's
picture while recording war damage in 50 Japanese cities. The two men met
when O'Donnell returned to Nagasaki in 1993.
At that time, O'Donnell took another picture of Taniguichi's back. The photo,
which shows tumors growing in the scars, will be exhibited at the Atomic
Bomb Museum this month as Nagasaki commemorates the 50th anniversary of
the end of what the Japanese call the "Pacific Ocean War."
Ramrod straight with quiet dignity, Taniguchi captures visitors' attention
during the formal and traditional exchange of business cards.
His card, which identifies him as president of the Atomic Bomb Sufferers'
Council, carries a picture of that lad with the bloodied back.