Rui Takita: Thank you for the invi­ta­tion to this cer­e­moy. I’m very hon­ored to be here. Congratulations to all the inductees. My name is Rui. I’m Suguru Yamaguchi’s son. My father passed away three years ago in 2016, caused by incur­able dis­ease. So sor­ry he can’t be here in per­son. I’m per­son­al­ly very excit­ed to be here at this spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny among all of the Internet leg­ends who built the Internet. I can­not thank my father enough for this spe­cial opportunity. 

My father was an Internet secu­ri­ty researcher work­ing for the Japanese gov­ern­ment. He used to fly around the world to train local engi­neers. I did­n’t get to spend too much time with him since he was so busy. But one time, I remem­ber him say­ing the Internet in Africa is going to devel­op more and more, so we have to think about Internet secu­ri­ty in Africa from the start. 

I was born in 1999. Some peo­ple like to call my gen­er­a­tion the Internet experts. For us, the Internet exist­ed from the moment we were born. And its safe­ty was tak­en for grant­ed. However, this is all due to the work of my father and his allies speak­ing to the world, telling them secu­ri­ty on the Internet is going to be high­ly impor­tant fif­teen years before I was even born.

Today is a mem­o­rable day to let the world know about his efforts and achieve­ment in Internet secu­ri­ty. I have a mes­sage from Jun Murai, known as the father of the Japanese Internet, who was both a great friend and a spe­cial col­league of Suguru. And I’d like to call Esaki to read a mes­sage from Jun Murai. 

Hiroshi Esaki: Thank you very much for the recog­ni­tion of Professor Suguru Yamaguchi’s work. I bring a spe­cial mes­sage by Jun Murai, who is the founder of the WIDE Project. He want­ed to share with you the four areas of achieve­ment, the activ­i­ties of Suguru Yamaguchi to be proud by all of us. 

First one, he was a pio­neer work­ing with me on the com­put­er net­works in Japan, start­ing from JUNET, WIDE, and the glob­al Internet con­nec­tion start­ing from 1984. 

Second, he was a pio­neer con­nect­ing the South Asia region by work­ing with lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties as Asia Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) [pron. ​“A triple‑I”] which cel­e­brates its fif­teenth meet­ing this October, con­nect­ing more than fif­teen coun­tries and thir­ty lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties in Asia. 

Third, he was one of the first peo­ple who iden­ti­fied the risk of Internet abus­es. He found­ed most of the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty insti­tutes exist­ing today in Japan, such as JPCERT, and the National Center for Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity, called NISC. 

Fourth, he sin­cere­ly want­ed to extend his mis­sion on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty to every­one on the globe. Therefore he was work­ing in Africa inten­sive­ly to enhance the col­lab­o­ra­tion among them with the glob­al cyber­se­cu­ri­ty community. 

His con­tri­bu­tions have been far more, and his pre­cious spir­it and mis­sion will stay with every­body who worked with him it eter­nal­ly. I also am very proud that his beloved son Rui is receiv­ing his talk of the inductee of into the Hall of Fame. I sus­pect by look­ing at Rui many of the atten­dees today thought Suguru is back. Please join me and his fam­i­ly to watch over Rui for his bright future with the same brave­ness to chal­lenge for the future of Suguru. 

Congratulations Suguru. I miss you very much.
Jun Murai, founder of the WIDE project, inductee of the Internet Hall of Fame, and pioneer 

Thank you.

Takita: Thank you Mr. Murai for the mes­sage, and thank you thank you Esaki for read­ing the message. 

Lastly, on behalf of my father I’d like to thank all of the mem­bers of JPCERT/CC, START[?], JPNIC, AI3, the Internet Society, the Internet Society of Japan, NICT, and NISC, and the WIDE project. In addi­tion, all the Internet researchers and engi­neers in their world. Thank you so much for your con­tri­bu­tions. I wish all sus­tain inno­va­tion of the Internet. Thank you.