Keiji was standing next to a concrete wall and was partially
shielded from the blast. The adult he
had been speaking to was burned to death on the spot. There was more horror to
come: His father, brother and sister were burned alive while trapped in the
rubble of their home. His mother, who
was nine months pregnant, gave birth on the day of the bombing to a girl who
died a few weeks later.
Like many Japanese people, Nakazawa and his family suffered
from poverty and hunger after the war, and survivors of the bombing (known in
Japanese as hibakusha) were often actively discriminated against in postwar
Hiroshima. In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist,
and produced short pieces for manga1 anthologies. Even after he moved to Tokyo, the discrimination persisted
If
you said that you were a hibakusha matter-of-factly, among friends, they made
weird faces. … if someone says, “I’m a
hibakusha,” Tokyo people won’t touch the tea bowl from which he’s been
drinking, because they’ll catch radioactivity. They’ll no longer get close to you.
For six years, Nakazawa kept quiet about his experiences.
Following the death of his mother in 1966, Nakazawa returned
to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in
his stories. Kuroi Ame ni
Utarete (Struck by Black Rain), the first of a series of five books,
was a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the
postwar black market. Nakazawa chose to portray his own experience
of the Hiroshima bombing in the 1972 story, Ore wa Mita, later published
in the U.S. by Educomics as I Saw It.2
Immediately after completing I Saw It, Nakazawa began
his major work, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). This series, which eventually filled ten volumes
(six volumes in the English translation), was based on the same events as I
Saw It but fictionalized, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the
author. Barefoot Gen depicted the bombing and its aftermath in
graphic detail but also turned a critical eye on the militarization of Japanese
society during World War II and on the
sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Barefoot
Gen was adapted into two animated films and a live action TV drama.
Keiji Nakazawa died of lung cancer on December 19, 2012.
For all his efforts, Nakazawa published millions of books
addressing his first-hand knowledge of the horrors of nuclear weapons. Who will tell the story now?
[1] Manga
are comics
created in Japan, or by Japanese
creators in the Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in the late
19th century. In Japan, people of all
ages read manga. The medium includes
works in a broad range of genres: action-adventure, romance, sports and games,
historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, suspense,
detective, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce, among others.
[2] Nakazawa’s I Saw It is available from Educomics in
Seattle, at 206-985-9483 or rifas@earthlink.net.
###
Editor's Note: This post is from a leaflet created by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action as part of its commemoration of the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can view and download the PDF version of the leaflet by clicking here.
###
Editor's Note: This post is from a leaflet created by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action as part of its commemoration of the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can view and download the PDF version of the leaflet by clicking here.
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
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