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Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen (Asian Voices)
This compelling autobiography tells the life story of famed manga artist Nakazawa Keiji. Born in Hiroshima in 1939, Nakazawa was six years old when on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb. His gritty and stunning account of the horrific aftermath is powerfully told through the eyes of a child who lost most of his family and neighbors. In eminently read
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Hardcover
,
188 pages
Published
December 16th 2010
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
(first published October 2nd 2010)
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Wow, I never knew a nonfiction book (albeit an autobio) could be so riveting. It was an easy read, and a good story, although it feels wrong to call it a "good story" when all the terrible things that happened are true. The parts about the bombing are by far the most dramatic and affecting chapters. I can't believe the horrors of the immediate aftermath of the bomb, with the descriptions of the victims all over the place: bloated in the river, moaning in the fields, burned black in the streets.
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If you are interested you've likely already made it through at least one of the ten Barefoot Gen volumes. You've already seen the melting flesh and the maggots so perhaps you won't be shocked by what you read (who knew that crayfish were such lovers of human flesh?) but you'll learn a great deal about how and why Nakazawa inked Gen's story. Totally absorbing, often horrific and incredibly poignant.
I remember when I high school, we were taught that ALL Japanese people during WWII believed that Hirohito was a god and they would fight to the last man. My, how stupid I felt believing that for even a second. While there was plenty of propaganda to suggest that Hirohito was indeed a god, there were plenty of people who opposed that notion and opposed Japan entering the war. It reminded me that American textbooks and class lectures are heavily biased and important information is omitted. It is p
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This book mainly deals with his early years and the emotional struggle it was to write the manga Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), and I felt that a lot of the rest of his life was skimmed over. But I imagine it's a hard thing to constantly rehash the trauma of his youth, and for all the anger in him, he seems to have been a rather private person, so I can't blame him for putting a limit on what he was willing to reveal.
Hiroshima- By Keiji Nakazawa
This book went through Keiji’s life and the experience of the bombing at Hiroshima. It started when he was a little boy, how he lost his father to the war. There were many hardships that his family faced after that. His mother had a low income, but still did everything she could for her children. They lived with minimal food and not many treats. When the bomb hit Hiroshima, Keiji’s family were all killed apart from him and his mother. The next part of their lives was ...more
This book went through Keiji’s life and the experience of the bombing at Hiroshima. It started when he was a little boy, how he lost his father to the war. There were many hardships that his family faced after that. His mother had a low income, but still did everything she could for her children. They lived with minimal food and not many treats. When the bomb hit Hiroshima, Keiji’s family were all killed apart from him and his mother. The next part of their lives was ...more
One of the most moving accounts of war and survival I have read in a long time. Fascinating. If you appreciated Elie Wiesel's "Night" this will be of interest.
An insightful and compelling autobiography by the Hiroshima stomic bomb survivior and creator of the Barefoot Gen manga series.
It's alright--definitely informative. I think I would rather have just read the manga, though.
Good eye opening read, but too much about manga and too little about the bomb...
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He was born in Hiroshima and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not evacuated died as a result of the explosion after they became trapped under the debris of their house, except for his mother, as well as an infant sister who died several weeks afterward. In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist, and produced
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