Hey, hey, faithful readers, check it out! A manga! After reading the fabulous Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know by Paul Gravett, a veritable compendium of graphic goodness, I was drawn to reading the first two volumes of Barefoot Gen, the almost autobiographical account of one boy's survival of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Inspired by his own experiences surviving the bombing of Hiroshima, Keiji Nakazawa wrote Barefoot Gen in an attempt to enlighten the world not only to the cataclysmic loss of life that nuclear war causes, but also to the sufferings of those it leaves behind.
Don't let the looks of the first volume decieve you, this story pulls no punches, depicting the monstrosity of war and the results of the bomb in gory detail. The story follow Gen, a happy-go-lucky Japanese boy living in Hiroshima with his family during World War 2. Though life is hard for his family, with little food, and a lot of trouble stemming from his father's anti-war stance, Gen remains optimistic, encouraging his family with his clownish antics. Most of the first volume is exposition, showing what life was like for Gen's family, and for Japan, before the bomb.
Though the series was written in an attempt to reveal the true horrors of nuclear war, Nakazawa makes no excuses for Japan and their actions during the war. Gen's father, who fiercely opposes the war, explains to his children and neighbors that the war will only benefit those in power, bringing death and sorrow to the ordinary people. The entire family suffers for his beliefs. He is arrested and beaten, their plot of wheat is destroyed, they are denied help or food, and his wife and children are harrassed and humiliated, in and out of school. Through all this, Gen's father continues to warn everyone that he can about the dangers that Japan is tempting. It is revealed that the famous kamikaze suicide pilots are a last ditch attempt for a military who can no longer afford advanced weaponry. This continues until the morning the bomb is dropped.
The rest of the first volume and the second volume follow Gen, no longer light-hearted, as he struggles to survive the world that is left behind and help his mother and newly born sister find food and shelter. Through meticulously detailed black and white drawings, the damage of the atomic bomb on human bodies is shown, skin melted and bombarded by shards of glass. There is a real strange tension between the adorable cartoon faces of Gen and the other children in the story and the horrific realities they are placed in. Whether intentional or not, it reinforces the "loss of innocence" theme prevalent throughout the rest of the story.
As a Westerner, born at the tail end of the 20th century, well educated in the American school system, I have known, from a very young age, about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are taught that these bombings ended the war, and were retribution for the lives lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor. But we are never taught what an atomic bomb does. Not once, in all of my education, did a teacher go into detail as to what the explosion of an atomic bomb does, or why it should be considered the very last resort in any situation. After reading Barefoot Gen, I don't believe it should ever be considered. We are told, as children, that the bombs leveled the city, that people were vaporized. We are shown slides of mushroom clouds, videos of buildings flattening. As an adult, you hear about the lasting effects of radiation sickness, of generations of Japanese, still born sick. In the back of your mind, you know what the results are. But never before have I seen it illustrated, laid out bare for me to absorb and truly understand.
As a child, I was exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. I saw plenty of documentaries, black and white film reels of mountains of emaciated bodies and smoke stakcs spewing black into the sky. Why are American children shown this, but never explained to about Japan? Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I think the answer is obvious. I grew up in the rural south. I was 12 on 9/11. Suddenly, I was surrounded by the sentiment that use of a nuke would be appropriate. It was a scary time, to be sure, but even as a child I thought that was a bit drastic. The people saying this? Usually boys my own age, sometimes their fathers. They had no idea what they were saying. Now, I don't want to scare children, but maybe if we could put our pride behind us and get over our fear of being percieved as the bad guy by our youth, then we could raise children who were more conscientious of what nuclear war is. If we educated children on the effects of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the same way we educated them about the Holocaust, perhaps "nuking them S.O.B.s" wouldn't be the first response many have to any sort of aggression.
Mr. Nakazawa, mission accomplished.
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