After Twenty-five Years
This is the world which the past quarter century has brought about. In this maddening world we have victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who have survived until today after being repeatedly on the verge of death and struggling with frequent despair. We can see in their struggles and in their living a path toward the future that is full of faith and hope. Mr. Sumiteru Taniguchi of Nagasaki is one of them. He was "rediscovered" 25 years later in a color documentary film on the atomic bombing that was obtained by the Japanese press during the first photo exhibition of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in New York in the spring 1970. Upon seeing himself in the film, he comments:
((I was riding my red bike down a road in Sumiyoshi on August 9, twenty-five years ago. It was two years since I had become a telegram delivery boy. I was sixteen years old.
In one fateful moment my eyes were blinded by a dazzling light and a burning wind from my left threw me three meters forward, twisting my bicycle like a candy bar. Strangely, I was not bleeding and there was no pain. I managed to drag myself into the basement of a munition factory 300 meters ahead and suddenly an agonizing cramp started in my back and spread throughout my body.
I lay groaning in that basement for three nights. Finally on the fourth day a rescue crew came and took me to Isahaya Public School, and after several days there I was taken to Nagayo Public School. Instead of medicine, our treatment consisted of having a mixture of newspaper ashes and grease applied to our burns. A month later I was brought to Shinkōzenkö Rescue Center where the American soldiers must have filmed me. Then finally, in November, I was moved to Omura Hospital.
That 16-year-old boy in the movie twenty-five years ago, burned so red, lying face down ... there is no question that that is my body. When I see that suffering face, the color of that burnt skin, in my eyes it is transfigured into the skin color and faces of those young ones killed in Vietnam.
"Kill me!!" I must have yelled again and again. The pain from my burns and the hopelessness all around me made me wish again and again that I were dead. Now when I look at this rotting blood and skin I seethe with these thoughts.
After the War the cause of peace was revived. But when I look at the state of the world today it seems as if people have forgotten the suffering of twenty-five years ago. I am fearful of that forgetfulness. I am afraid those who have forgotten the past are going ahead in their support of nuclear weapons.
When I saw that single color shot of me in the Atomic Bomb Film the pain and hate of war were revived somewhere in my body and spread throughout it. No, I am not a guinea-pig. No, of course this is nothing to make a spectacle of. But you who have seen my body, don't turn your face away. I want you to look again. I survived miraculously but in the scars of my body is the need to curse the atomic bomb. I want so much to believe in the warmth and determination I see in your eyes as you sit stiffly, watching us.
I want to present before you more arguments against the Bomb. This movie does not show one thousandth, not one millionth, of the living hell we experienced.
After the atomic bomb was dropped, I spent one year and nine months unable to move; eating in bed, going to the bathroom in bed. I was in such bad shape that people who saw me wondered only when I was going to die and thought it strange that I hadn't died yet. As for my body, the part of my back not covered by my waist belt was completely burned. The skin on my left leg from my knee to my thigh was all burns, and because I was lying face down all the time my jaw and the whole left side of my face and ribs had bedsores. I couldn't stretch my left arm out more than 110 degrees.
But finally in 1947, my wounds healed somewhat and I was able to get out of bed. I walked! I had never been happier than on that day. The people in the hospital, the doctors and nurses in particular, were as happy for me as if it were they themselves, for two times during that period I had stopped breathing and been close to death.
In March, 1949, although my back burns did not heal up, they said that I would be able to leave the hospital. But with that good news came new fears: Can I work with this body? How will people look at me? Those fears gave me many sleepless nights; several times I left my hospital room to cry alone.
Finally the day came. Everyone who knew me came to see me with their eyes full of tears and saw me off until I couldn't see them all. I convalesced at home and then in April returned to my old job.
In 1950 I had had some skin grafting done on my left arm because I could not move it freely, but it was not very successful. Again in 1951 I went into the University Hospital where I had some more plastic surgery on my jaw and the left side of my face, helping me considerably.
In spite of everything, in June of 1950, the Korean War began. Once again we heard the voice of America threatening to use the atomic bomb. Out of the Occupation's oppression came a petition for peace: "The first government to use the atomic bomb will be considered guilty of a war crime." That argument for peace won and peace returned to Korea, but now new wars are raging in Laos and Vietnam.
In August, 1955, the First World Conference Against A-and H-Bombs was held and one atomic bomb victim stood on the stage and rendered his plea. When I realized how other victims were opposing the Bomb I decided that I too should throw away my hesitation and become a witness for peace.
In 1956 I got married. Being a survivor of the bombing, I had been turned down in an "arranged marriage," but this time...Two years later we had a little girl and two years after that a little boy. Giving birth to two healthy, whole babies was enough to bring tears to my eyes; me, who still felt fearful because of my residual ailments.
Around the same time when I got married I joined the peace movement. My wife seemed uneasy but that was the road I had chosen. Now she is also active in the Movement. I hated showing my deformed body that time. Of course I do not want to become an object of display even now. But that does not mean that we victims should hide in the shadow. We must not give in to just struggling with our own personal despair and not working for peace.
Part of my back still was not healed completely, and troubled by that, I had to miss a lot of work. Finally I went back to the hospital but they said that even with surgery there would only be a fifty-fifty chance of success. But I could not stand the pain, so in 1960 I went into the Nagasaki A-bomb Hospital and had the keloid operated on with general anesthesia. Fortunately, it was successful the first time and since then it has not hurt so much. Of course my condition is chronic and since my blood-producing processes have been broken down my body is weak and tires easily. But I am continuously reminded that I was left alive out of all that hell.
Living and struggling for peace is my joy and consolation, but those of us who have walked forward out of Hell know that there has been enough suffering. We want our sons and our daughters to live a rich, happy life in peace. And for this we depend on everyone to struggle with all their might for peace.