CartersBird
The original picture is the black and white photograph of Sumiteru Taniguchi taken by U.S. Marine Sergeant Joe O'Donnell, September 15, 1945, in Nagasaki. O’Donnell waved away the flies and gently brushed out the maggots before taking the picture, and then decided to take no more pictures of burn victims unless ordered to do so.

Sumiteru Taniguchi, aged 16 in 1945, was about one mile away from the Nagasaki epicenter. A mile away from this small primitive nuclear bomb was not far enough. It was 11:02 A.M.; Taniguchi-san was on his red bicycle delivering mail in the Sumiyoshi-machi area on that hot Nagasaki day. He was burned on his back, left arm, and on his buttocks through his pants, while on his bicycle. I have wondered if he was standing on the pedals going uphill. It is now too late to find out; Taniguchi-san died of cancer, August 30, 2017, age 88. Repeatedly, Sumiteru pleaded with his doctors and nurses, "Kill me! Kill me!" He spent 21 months lying on his stomach in the hospital; it became his eating place and his toilet place. Taniguchi-san spent most of his life warning people that the survival of humanity is threatened by the existence of nuclear weapons.