The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 39 | Number 1 | Article ID 3416 | Sep 27, 2010

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Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen　　ヒロシマ−−はだしのゲン自伝

Richard Minear, Nakazawa Keiji

Hiroshima: The Autobiography ofBarefoot Gen

Nakazawa Keiji

Translated and Edited by Richard H.Minear

The Asia-Pacific Journal is honored to offer apreview of Hiroshima: The Autobiography ofBarefoot Gen by Nakazawa Keiji, includingRichard Minear’s introduction and a chapter ofthe book, with Nakazawa’s manga illustrations.

Translator’s Introduction

Richard H. Minear

Many in the English-speaking world need nointroduction to Barefoot Gen.1 They have readthe manga, available in ten volumes in finetranslation, or they have seen the animatedmovie, available on YouTube and elsewhere.Barefoot Gen is already international. It startedin Japan, as a manga serial, in 1973. Then arelatively unknown manga artist, NakazawaKeiji completed the serial in 1985. By then ithad grown into a ten-volume book. BarefootGen’s Japanese readers number in the manytens of millions. And there have been filmversions: a three-part live-action film(1976–1980), a two-part anime (1983 and1986), and a two-day television drama (2007).There is a book of readers’ responses, Lettersto Barefoot Gen. On GoogleJapan, “Hadashi noGen” returns more than two million hits.

What has its impact been outside of Japan? Inthe late 1970s there was a first, partial English

translation of the manga. It has now appearedin a second, complete translation (Last Gasp,2004–2009). Volume I has an introduction byArt Spiegelman, creator of Maus. Spiegelmanbegins: “Gen haunts me. The first time I read itwas in the late 1970s, shortly after I’d begunworking on Maus. . . . Gen effectively bearswitness to one of the central horrors of ourt ime . G ive yourse l f over to . . . th i sextraordinary book.” R. Crumb has called theseries “Some of the best comics ever done.”Wikipedia has articles on Barefoot Gen andKeiji Nakazawa and on the films, the anime,and the television drama. On YouTube, theanime sequence of the dropping of thebomb—in English—has racked up more thanone hundred thousand views, and the rest ofthe anime is also available. There aretranslations into Dutch, Esperanto, German,Finnish, French, and Norwegian, with others inthe works.

The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen may wellcome as a surprise to those in the English-language world who don’t read manga or watchanime. I hope it will lead them to seek out bothversions. Even those who already knowBarefoot Gen may wish to relive that story in adifferent genre. After all, manga has itsconventions, and they differ from theconventions of prose autobiography. In hisintroduction to the ten-volume Englishtranslation of the manga, Spiegelman mentionsthe “overt symbol ism” as seen in the“relentlessly appearing sun,” the “casualviolence” as seen in Gen’s father’s treatment ofhis children, and the “cloyingly cute”depictions. Under the latter categorySpiegelman discusses the “Disney-like

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oversized Caucasian eyes and generallyneotenic faces.” Neotenic? Webster’sEncyclopedic Dictionary (1989) defines neotenyas “the retention of larval characters beyondthe normal period; the occurrence of adultcharacteristics in larvae.” Spiegelman has thelatter definition in mind: consider our coverand its faces of Gen, age six, and Tomoko, a fewmonths old.

Apart from the illustrations he drew specificallyfor the autobiography, those conventions do notapply to Nakazawa’s autobiography. Beyondthe conventions Spiegelman mentions, I wouldcomment that even though he writes of theextreme hunger that most Japaneseexperienced in 1945, he depicts all of hischaracters as remarkably well-fed. Such is alsothe case with the almost Rubenesque figures inthe Hiroshima screens of Iri and ToshiMaruki.2 Nakazawa had no formal training inart, but perhaps conventions of the art worldtrumped memory.

The autobiography has appeared in twoeditions. It appeared first in 1987, with the titleThe Void That Is “Hiroshima”—Account of theNakazawa Clan. Nakazawa revised that versionand reissued it in 1995 in the version that Ihave translated.3 It poses few problems oftranslation, but I should mention one issue: thenames of family members. Throughout theautobiography, Nakazawa refers to his olderbrothers as “Oldest brother” and “Next oldestbrother.” I have identified them always bygiven names, Kōji and Akira. He uses givennames consistently for his older sister, Eiko,and baby sister, Tomoko. He refers to hisyounger brother throughout as Susumu. (Themanga calls him Shinji. Susumu and Shin arealternate readings of the same character.)4

Nakazawa’s Autobiography of Barefoot Genmakes compelling reading. Mark Selden haswritten that it is “in certain ways the mostr ivet ing book we have on the bomb.”Suitable—if that’s the right word—for readers

of all ages, this may be the single mostaccessible account of the Hiroshimaexperience. Needless to say, it is Nakazawa’saccount, and it is colored by his biases. Theseinclude an intense aversion to the wartimeJapanese government and its policies, domesticand foreign, and an understandable hatred ofthe American military that dropped the atomicbomb on Hiroshima.

This translation preserves the character andquality of the original. To reach the broadestpossible English-language audience, I have leftfew Japanese terms beyond manga and animeuntranslated. I have even translated the termhibakusha as “bomb victim” or “bomb victims.”I have deleted specific place names where itwas possible to do so without altering thenarrative. I provide maps of Nakazawa’sHiroshima, a limited number of footnotes, andfive excerpts from Barefoot Gen. But theseadditions are not essential to a thoughtfulreading of the book. As an appendix I includean excerpt from an interview with Nakazawathat took place in August 2007.

This book is a translation of Nakazawa Keiji’sprose autobiography. It also includes, betweenthe prose chapters, four-page excerpts fromNakazawa’s graphic novel Barefoot Gen. Thecomplete Barefoot Gen fills ten volumes, a totalof some twenty-five hundred pages. Theseexcerpts are intended to give readers who havenot read it a taste of the manga.

Graphic novels are works of art with their ownconventions and perspectives. They are not“creative nonfict ion,” an oxymoron Iencountered for the first time in a discussion ofa recent fraudulent book on Hiroshima.5 Theyare fictional even if based on actual events.Like Spiegelman’s Maus, Barefoot Gen is anartistic representation of reality. CompareBarefoot Gen and this autobiography, andnumerous contrasts emerge. Nakazawa himselfhas pointed to one important one:

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What differs about the death of myfather from Barefoot Gen is that Imyself wasn’t at the scene. Momtold me about it, in gruesomedetail. It was in my head, so in themanga I decided to have Gen bethere and try to save his father.Mom always had nightmares aboutit. She said it was unbearable—shecould still hear my brother’s cries.Saying “I’ll die with you,” shelocked my brother in her arms, butno matter how she pulled, shecouldn’t free him. Meanwhile, mybrother said, “It’s hot!” and Dadtoo said, “Do something!” My oldersister Eiko, perhaps because shewas pinned between beams, saidnot a thing. At the time, Mom said,she herself was already crazed.She was crying, “I’ll die with you.”Fortunately, a neighbor passing bysaid to her, “Please stop; it’s nouse. No need for you to die withthem.” And, taking her by thehand, he got her to flee the spot.When she turned back, the flameswere fierce, and she could hearclearly my brother’s cr ies ,“Mother , i t ’ s ho t ! ” I t wasunbearable. Mom told me thisscene, bitterest of the bitter. Acruel way to kill.6

Gen’s presence at a crucial moment whenNakazawa Keiji was absent is not the onlydifference. To sustain the twenty-five hundredpages of Barefoot Gen, Nakazawa inventedsubplots. One example is the character KondōRyūta , who appears nowhere in theautobiography. Astonishingly, the recentfraudulent book treats Ryūta as a real person,including him, for example, in his appendix“The People”: “A five-year-old Hiroshimaorphan, unofficially adopted into the family ofKeiji ‘Gen’ Nakazawa. He lived in the same

neighborhood as Dr. Hachiya.” It’s as if ahistorian of the European holocaust were totreat one of the characters in Art Spiegelman’sMaus as a real person.7

Barefoot Gen is art. This book is autobiography.Even if, as a genre, autobiography is notoriousfor a bias in favor of the author, sheerfabrication is beyond the pale. RM

The Day of the Flash and Boom

August 6, 1945, Monday. B-29s had flown overHiroshima twice the night before, and air raidsirens had sounded constantly. I awokeunhappy that I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Theweather the morning of August 6 swept thatunhappiness away. The sky was cloudless andabsolutely clear, bright sunlight pierced oureyes, and houses and trees stood out as if

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painted in primary colors. My eyes felt as ifthey’d been washed clean, and my unhappinessover lack of sleep vanished, too.

Suddenly, at about 7:20, soon after the wholefamily, gathered about the round table, hadfinished breakfast, the sirens sounded. I wassurprised. Strange: I didn’t remember sirenssounding that early in the morning. Dadmuttered, “Mr. Enemy is coming really early.Unusual.” Urged on by Mom, who said we’d bein danger i f bombs fel l , we made ourpreparations and headed for the neighborhoodair ra id trench. Mom’s due date wasapproaching, and clutching her swollen belly,she huffed and puffed as she ran. In the trench,I said, “At worst, it’s another observation plane.No need to worry,” and played with Susumu.Sure enough, the megaphone voice came, “Allclear!” and we returned home, kiddingourselves for getting all flustered over thealert—“An observation plane, after all.”

Looking up into the clear blue sky, I could stillsee the contrail of the B-29, a white strip; in thedistance it had already fanned out. Dad said toMom, burdened by her big belly, “Today will behot.” The B-29 that flew in that morning was areconnaissance plane to check the weatherconditions over Hiroshima and to photographthe target before the bombing. Had the atomicbomb been dropped then, many would havesurvived because they’d run to the trenches.

The “all clear” came, and reassured, the fourhundred thousand residents of Hiroshima allbegan the day’s activities. City trolleys wentbusily on their rounds, car after car disgorgingits passengers; a continual flow of peopleheaded for businesses and factories. Peoplebegan their activities. Children headed toschool. Housewives cleared away breakfastthings and set about cleaning or doing thewash. Soldiers started drilling. Mobilized forlabor service, women and students collectedthe detritus from collapsed houses and cartedthe stuff off.

At that time the elementary school we weregoing to had no summer vacation; we had to goto school to study to become strong “littlepatriots.” With my air raid hood hanging offone shoulder and my satchel on my back, Iwent out onto the clothes-drying porch off thesecond floor and said to Mom, who washanging laundry out to dry, “I’m off.” In herapron, wiping off sweat, Mom went on hangingout the clothes.

On the drying porch, flowers and plants in potswere lined up, models for Dad to paint. Astrange thing had happened with these pottedplants. There was fruit on the loquat. Thewhole family stared: “Fruit on a potted tree?”Dad told us, sharply, “When it’s ripe, I’m goingto paint it, so hands off!” With a sinisterpremonition, Mom worried, “Something mustbe out of kilter meteorologically.” I’m not afatalist, but Mom’s sinister premonition turnedout to be accurate.

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With one eye on the loquat, I went downstairs.Eiko was sitting in the nine-by-twelve-foot roomleading to the entryway. On the round tableshe’d lined up textbook and notes and wassharpening a pencil. I called to Eiko, “C’mon.”For once Eiko said, “I have to look somethingup; you go on ahead.” Beside the entryway wasa nine-by-nine-foot room, and Dad, clad inkimono, was setting to work. I said to Dad, “I’moff,” and he nodded and straightened hiskimono. In the entryway my younger brotherSusumu (age four) was plumped down, holdinga model warship, pretending that it was makingheadway through waves. He was singing in aloud voice, “Tater, tater, white potato, sweetpotato.”8 Seeing me, Susumu urged, “Hurryhome after school. We’ll go to the river and sailthis ship.”

I never dreamed that this would be the last

time I saw Dad, Eiko, and Susumu. WithSusumu’s song at my back, I joined theneighborhood kids, and we went to KanzakiElementary School, less than half a mile fromour house. Kanzaki Elementary School facedthe trolley street linking Eba and Yokogawa. Itwas surrounded by a concrete wall. The gate onthe trolley street was the back gate. In thecenter of the schoolyard towered a huge willowtree, spreading its branches wide. Behind itwas the two-story wooden school building, L-shaped. Those of us in the lower grades wouldenter the school singing, led by students in theupper grades:

We owe it to the soldiers

That today, too, we can go toschool

Shoulder to shoulder with ourclassmates.

Thank you, you soldiers

Who fought for country, forcountry.

Singing at the top of our lungs this totallymilitaristic anthem, we’d advance up the trolleystreet and go through the gate.

A person’s fate—life or death—truly is a matterof sheerest chance. Had I entered the gate thatday as I always did, I would have been wipedoff the face of the earth. Standing in the broadschoolyard with absolutely no cover, I wouldhave been bathed—my whole body—in the raysthe atomic bomb radiated, more than 9,000degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt iron.Burned pitch-black, I would have died.

That day, a moment before entering the gate, Iwas stopped by a classmate’s mother. Sheasked me, “The air raid alert sounded a bit ago.Are today’s classes at the school or at thetemple?” At that time, those in the lower

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grades alternated between the school and alocal temple as place of instruction because ofthe danger that we wouldn’t be able to flee ifbombs fell. The concrete wall on either side ofthe gate was a foot thick. Moving close to it, Ireplied to her, “We won’t know till we askTeacher,” and I happened to look up.

In the sky, the vapor trail of a B-29 stretchedalong the mountains of the Chūgoku range,seemingly headed for the center of Hiroshima.The sun reflected off the nose of the plane’sglittering duralumin body. Pointing at the B-29approaching steadily, I called, “Ma’am, it’s a B.. . .” She too looked up and said, “You’re right:a B-29. Strange that the air raid alert hasn’tsounded,” and the two of us looked up at theapproaching B-29.

Had the sirens sounded at this point, as theyh a d e a r l i e r t h a t m o r n i n g w i t h t h ereconnaissance plane, many people would havefled to air raid trenches and survived. I think itwas truly a clever psychological tactic on thepart of the U.S. military. To make the residentsshort of sleep from having the air raid alarm gooff twice the previous night and to foster themind-set “Hiroshima is safe”: that’s whatenabled the Enola Gay, carrying the atomicbomb, to fly over majestically on the attack.That way, even if a B-29 flew over, we’d think,“It’s only a reconnaissance plane,” and let ourguard down.

“Why didn’t the air raid alert sound?” Thatthought has stayed in my heart forever, a gapin the Hiroshima story. After the war, I checkedthe documents and found that NHK Hiroshimabegan to broadcast an air raid alert at 8:15. Itwas at 8:15 that the bomb was dropped andexploded. If only the alert had sounded earlier!

The Enola Gay cut its engines, penetratedquietly to the heart of Hiroshima, and droppedthe atomic bomb, raising the curtain on hell.Even today, if I close my eyes, the colors of theatomic bomb the moment it exploded comefloating right up. A pale light like the flash of a

flashbulb camera, white at the center, engulfedme, a great ball of light with yellow and redmixed at its outer edges. Once that violent flashburned itself onto my retinas, all memorystopped.

Pictures of Hell

How long was it? When consciousness returnedand I opened my eyes, it was pitch dark. I wasconfused: “Huh? A moment ago it was broaddaylight, and suddenly it’s night?” When Irolled over and tried to stand, pain shotthrough my right cheek. “What happened?” Ifocused and looked about and saw that a six-inch nail sticking out of a board had piercedme. Raising my head had torn my cheek. Bloodwas flowing. The weird atmosphere frightenedme. I realized I was sweating.

I tried to stand up, but my body didn’t move.Turning my head, I saw that bricks, stones, treebranches, scraps of lumber lay on top of me.The concrete wall, too, had fallen over and wascovering me.

Frantically I pushed at the stones and wood ontop of me and scrambled my way out.Instinctively, I looked about for the satchel thathad been on my back and the air raid hood thathad been hanging from my shoulder. But Ididn’t find them—perhaps they’d been sentflying, torn off in the blast? Turning to look atthe trolley street, I gasped.

Until just a moment ago, the mother of myclassmate had been standing right in front ofme and, like me, looking up at the B-29. Herentire body had been burned pitch-black. Herhair was in tatters. The workpants and jacketshe’d been wearing, charred and looking likeseaweed, hung about her neck and waist. Andshe’d been blown across to the other sidewalkand was lying on her back. Her white eyes,wide open in her blackened and sooty face,glared across at me.

Confused, not knowing what had happened, I

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stood in the middle of the trolley street. Thisfamiliar street had been transformedshockingly; I stood in amazement. The trolleywires had been cut from the poles lining eitherside of the street and were coiled likespiderwebs on the pavement; thick telephoneline sagged from telephone poles like a greatsnake sleeping on a tree branch. It sagged intothe distance. The rows of two-story houses oneach side had been crushed, and the lowerstories had collapsed utterly like popped paperballoons, flat. Atop them, the second stories laypiled, undulating off into the distance. DropIndia ink into water, and it thins and spreads.Smoke just like pale ink covered the sky andwafted all about. The sky was like an inkpainting; boards and sheets of metal dancedhelter-skelter into the sky, quite like birds.Every now and then, out of the collapsed rowsof houses a dragon’s tongue of bright redflames crawled, disappeared, moved. Aghast, Iburned that scene onto my retinas.

I learned that when people are thrust suddenlyinto extremity, they are without emotion. Theyact only by instinct. Returning instinctively tothe nest, my feet moved on their own in thedirection of home. There’s an expression,“Spinning your wheels,” and that’s preciselythe way it was. I felt I was running andrunning, yet getting nowhere. Up ahead, thepale-ink smoke drifted, as if bubbling up. Whenpeople materialized out of it, I was shocked andraced up to them, wanting to know what onearth had happened to them.

First I met five or six women. Hiroshima’ssummers are very hot, so they’d probably beenwearing only simple chemises as they tidiedtheir kitchens or cleaned house. One afteranother, the women I saw had chemises on. AsI got near them, I was amazed. They hadcountless slivers of glass sticking in their flesh:in the front of some of the women, on the rightsides of others, on the left or on the backs ofstill others.

People who’d been in rooms with windows totheir right had been pierced only on the rightsides of their bodies as the bomb blastpulverized the windowpanes. They were likepincushions, with blood flowing. People who’dbeen in rooms with windows straight ahead ofthem had their fronts covered with glasssplinters. The glass splinters had pierced eventheir eyeballs, so they couldn’t open their eyes.They felt their way along, like blind people.How they’d been standing in relation to thewindows determined where on their bodies theglass splinters stuck, and one person differedfrom the next.

I noticed one woman. Her hair was dusty andswirling in disarray, the shoulder strap of herchemise was cut and her breasts exposed, andher breasts were blue, as if tattooed. As I wasable to understand later, the glass splinterslooked blue, and she had so many piercing her,mainly her breasts, and countless splintersburied in her that the glass splinters seemedlike a tattoo dying her breasts blue.

The women pierced by glass splinters werebleeding. They walked silently. Countlesspieces of glass were embedded in their bodies,so that each time they took a step, the glasssplinters jingle-jangled. Aghast, I watchedthese women go by, then raced for home.

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On the sidewalk on the left side of the trolleystreet, naked people burned so black that Icouldn’t tell male from female sat with bothlegs outstretched, eyes wide and fixed on apoint in the sky, cowering, as if simpleminded.Pumps for firefighting had been installedearlier at set intervals along the sidewalk onthe right side of the trolley street. Uninjuredpeople hurried to those pumps, twisted thecocks, and scooped up water. People clusteredsuddenly about the pumps. The women withinnumerable glass splinters in them took thepump’s water with both hands and poured it allover themselves. Washing their blackenedbodies covered with blood and dust, theyexposed the glass fragments that stuck intotheir bodies and silently pulled them out.

On the opposite pavement, too, were peoplewith not a stitch on, dazed and burned so black

I couldn’t tell male from female. Seeing waterflowing from the pumps, they crawledsluggishly along the ground and approachedthe pumps, each of them sticking their handsinto the flow of water, scooping up water andlifting it trancelike to their mouths. Around thepump women gathered, absorbed in washingoff the blood and picking out glass splinters,and people burned black were drinking waterblindly. The same scene occurred at eachpump. They were acting simply on instinct. Theglass was sticking into them, and it hurt, sothey pulled it out. They’d been burned all overby the rays, and they were thirsty, so theydrank. Neither words nor poses showedconscious intent.

In scenes of carnage—fire or calamity—inmovies or plays, voices cry, “Ouch!” “Horrible!”“Help!” People suffer and writhe. But thosescenes are unreal. When people are thrownsuddenly into the carnage of an extremesituation, they utter not a single emotion-ladenword but act silently on instinct. Just as ifwatching a silent movie, I, too, looked on at thequiet scene, not saying a word. From time totime gasoline drums exploded, the soundcarrying in all directions.

Coming to myself, I took the street leading toour house. But at the beginning of the lane toour home, fires were spreading along the rowof structures on either side. Flames crept alongthe ground. The two fires stretched forwardfrom either side, as if joining hands, and in aninstant the road became a sea of fire. Theroadway functioned as a chimney, and a hotwind gusted through. The road ahead became awall of fire, and flames completely blocked theway.

Sensing instinctively that I’d burn to death if Iwent farther, I reversed course, as if in a daze.I followed the trolley street, and suddenly, forthe first time, like an electric current runningthrough my body, wi ld terror ru led.Loneliness—my family’s abandoned me!—and

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terror—I’m all alone!— seized my mind. I ranback and forth on the trolley street, searchingdesperately, crying “Daddy!” “Mommy!”

The trolley street from Funairi Naka-chō as faras Saiwai-chō was a human exhibition, inhumanforms utterly transformed. Naked bodiesmoving sluggishly, burned by rays and trailingblackened bits of clothing like seaweed. Movingforward, glass splinters from the explosionsticking into all parts of their bodies, spurtingblood. People whose eyeballs hung down theircheeks and trembled; they’d been blown out bythe sudden pressure of the blast. People whosebellies had been ripped open, trailing a yard ofintestines, crawling along on all fours. Shrikesimpale fish and frogs on dead tree branches,storing them to eat later; people, too, had beensent flying and hung from branches, impaled. Iran among these horrific humans, threading myway, crying out, searching for family.

Black smoke eddied violently, covering thearea. Flames danced crazily, wildly. The trolleystreet, too, became dangerous. The terror I feltthen sank into my heart; I will have it with meas long as I live.

Black Rain

Luckily, a neighbor found me as I was runningabout and crying. She too wore a chemise, andbits of glass pierced her entire body. She wasdousing herself with pump water to wash offthe blood. Her white chemise was dyed brightred. It was as if it had been red to begin with.

“Aren’t you Nakazawa Kei?” she asked. “Yourmother’s on this road at the Funairi Kawaguchi-chō trolley stop. Quick, go!” In a trance, Iheaded for the Funairi Kawaguchi-chō trolleystop. The crowd fleeing in the same directionproceeded, naked bodies blackened, eachholding both hands chest-high, leaning forward,just like the specters depicted in paintings.

In this sluggish procession, I noticed a strangething. The parts of a person wearing white

clothing—white shirt, white pants—werecompletely uninjured. White shirt, white pantsalone caught my eye, bright, as if dancing inspace, flickering. When the instant rays, hotterthan 9,000 degrees, shone on people on theground below, their white clothing acted as amirror, reflecting the rays. By contrast, peoplewearing black were consumed instantly,clothing and body, by the radiant light. Duringthe war, clothing stood out and was easy forenemy planes to spot was outlawed, so mostpeople wore dark clothes. Hence the number ofthose suffering from burns over their entirebody increased several times over.

Struck by 9,000 degree rays, your skinimmediately developed countless blisters, oneconnected with the next; scattered over yourwhole body, they grew to eight inches indiameter. When you walked, the fluid inside thelarge blisters sloshed with the vibration, andfinally the fragile blisters burst, the liquidpoured out, and the skin peeled off.

I wouldn’t have thought human skin would peelso easily. The skin of the chest peeled off, fromthe shoulders down; the backs of the handspeeled; the skin of the arms peeled off, down tothe five fingernails, and dangled. From thefingertips of both hands, yard-long skin hungand trembled. The skin of the back peeled fromboth shoulders, stopped at the waist, and hunglike a droopy loincloth. The skin of the legspeeled to the anklebone and dragged, a yardlong, on the ground. People couldn’t helplooking like apparitions. If they walked witharms down, the skin hanging off their fingertipsdragged painfully on the ground, so they raisedtheir arms and held them at shoulder level,which was less painful. Even if they wanted torun, the skin of their legs was dragging alongon the ground, impeding their steps. Shufflingone step at a t ime, they proceeded, aprocession of ghosts.

In this procession of ghosts, I made my way tothe Funairi Kawaguchi-chō trolley stop. On

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both sides of the trolley street in Kawaguchi-chō were sweet potato and vegetable fields.The farmhouses scattered in the fields wereleaning from the blast. Wide-eyed, I lookedabout the trolley street. There, on the sidewalkon the left, sat Mom. She had spread a blanketon the sidewalk, set some pots beside it, andwas sitting in her apron, face sooty, a vacantexpression on her face. I stood in front of her.We looked each other in the face, silent,exhausted, and I sank to the ground beside her.I was overcome with joy and relief that I hadfinally found family. Soon I noticed that Momwas holding carefully to her chest somethingwrapped in a dirty blanket. I peeked inside theblanket and saw a baby, newborn, face red andwrinkled. It was a mystery: “Huh? Suddenly ababy. . . .” I looked again at Mom’s tummy, andit had shrunk.

The shock had sent Mom into labor, and in thecarnage of atomic hell she had given birth onthe pavement to a baby girl. As she writhed inpain on the pavement, several passersby hadgathered and helped with the birth.

Exhausted, I squatted on the pavement.Perhaps because of the effect of the radiation, Iwas nauseous. I vomited a yellow fluid, and Ifelt bad; I hadn’t the energy to sit up. Trying tohold back the urge to vomit, dazed, I watchedthe scene unfolding before me. From thedirection of town, the procession of ghostscontinued one after the other, passing beforeme. Right before my eyes, skin trembled fromarms now completely skinless, drooping twentyinches from fingers. I watched in amazement,“Skin really does come right off!”

Each person shuffled, dragging a yard of skinfrom each leg, so from way back in thedirection of town, dust swirled into the air.When the procession of ghosts reached thetrolley street, they climbed down into thepotato and vegetable fields on either side,collapsed atop the plants, and fell asleep.Burned by the rays and blistering, their entirebodies were hot and painful, and the cool ofplants against their skin felt good. Instead ofblankets, they lay on plants. As I watched, thevegetable fields turned into row upon row ofpeople whose skin had melted.

The sky suddenly turned quite dark, and when Ilooked up, a stormy black cloud had coveredthe sky. Large raindrops spattered against theasphalt and created a pattern of spots. Largedrops of rain struck my head and my clothes.The surface of the drops was oily and glittering;

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it was “black rain.” Black spots clung here andthere to Mom’s clothing and mine. When Iwiped the drops from my face with my hand,they were slippery. I didn’t like how they felt.Somehow or other a rumor spread: “Thosedamned Yanks! This time they’re droppingheavy oil from the sky to make Hiroshima burneasier!” The black cloud moved rapidly to thewest, the black rain stopped, and the skycleared. I never dreamed that this black raincontained radioactivity that forever afterdestroyed your cells.

W e w e r e l u c k y . H a d w e f l e d t o t h enorthwestern part of Hiroshima, we would havebeen soaked in radioactivity, quickly contractedleukemia, and died. Black rain continued to fall,concentrated in northwestern Hiroshima.Where we were, it rained a bit and thenstopped, and we avoided being drenched in alot of radioactivity. While I watched thepavement, patterned with large black raindropsand gleaming eerily, I was overtaken bydrowsiness and, before I knew it, dropped off tosleep.

When, feeling as if I was choking, I opened myeyes, night had fallen. With no electricity andvirtually no lights, it should have been pitch-dark, but all Hiroshima, leading city of theChūgoku region, was going up in flames, awaterfall flowing upward instead of downward.By the light of the fires, you could see clearly.The heat reflected from the flames blazingbrightly had made me gasp for air and wakenedme. I turned my eyes to the right, and on theshore of the lower reaches of the Honkawa,thick tree trunks had been piled high in a longrow. The hot wind quickly dried the wood, andthe fire spread to them, one after the other.The tree trunks made loud sounds, split apart,and flew up into the air. The heat reflectedfrom the flames was hot; we moved right upnext to the field’s stone wall and shieldedourselves from the heat. The stones were cooland felt good. I looked up at the night sky, dyedred, scorching; smoke eddied in columns, and

the flames reflected off the smoke. It was as if adouble red curtain covered us. Watching thatnight sky, I fell asleep again.

Twice, three times, I was awakened by a soundas if dozens of insects had flown into my ears,flapping their wings. Already confused, I keptthinking, “What a racket! What is it?” As timepassed, the sound became louder, and Icouldn’t sleep. When I listened carefully, itturned out to be a one-word chorus: “Water!”“Water!” From the fields on either sideresounded the agonized chorus. I looked atMom, and she too had been awakened by thechorus crying, “Water!” Mom said, “Those poorpeople—let’s get them some water. Go scoopsome up.” At her urging, I picked up a metalhelmet that was rolling about on the pavementand pumped it full of water.

Mom found the cup we needed, scooped waterfrom the helmet I was holding, and offered it toa person groaning, “Water! Water!” With astart, as if he’d caught the scent of water, hebent his head over the cup, and emptied it inone gulp. Then, three or four seconds later, hecollapsed, his head striking the ground.Alarmed, Mom shook him and cried, “What’swrong?” but he was already dead. We offeredthe cup of water to others groaning “Water!Water!” and each and every one buried his orher face in the cup and drank it off in one gulp.And then, three or four seconds later, they alldied, their heads hitting the ground. When wegave them water, they died, one after the other.Amazed at this strange phenomenon, Mom andI stood stock-still in the field.

Editor’s note: Toward the end of volume I ofBarefoot Gen, Nakazawa depicts the events ofAugust 6. Gen and his mother try to rescueShinji and Gen’s father from the ruins of theirhome. We know from the autobiography thatNakazawa himself was not present, that helearned about these events only after the fact,from his mother. But in Barefoot Gen, Gen isthe focus throughout, and here he tries

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heroically first to rally neighbors and then tolift the roof beams himself.

The treatment of bomb damage begins fourteenpages earlier and includes a striking variety offorms: one panel fills the entire left half of apage (the explosion itself), one panel stretchesacross the top half of two pages (a scene ofcollapsed houses on either side of a highwaydown the middle of which run trolley tracks),and one panel fills a full page (a burninghorse). This treatment of bomb damagecompletes volume I and extends through muchof volume II.

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One can purchase the book Hiroshima: TheAutobiography of Barefoot Gen here(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1442207477/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20).

Richard H. Minear is Professor of Historyemeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst.His books include translations: Hiroshima:T h r e e W i t n e s s e s(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691055734/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20), Kurihara Sadako’s BlackEggs, and The Autobiography of ‘Barefoot Gen.’His best-selling Dr. Seuss Goes to War: TheWorld War II Editorial Cartoons of TheodorS e u s s G e i s e l(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565847040/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) contains an introduction byArt Spiegelman.

Richard H. Minear is the author of Victors'

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Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1971) andDr. Seuss Goes to War (1999) and the editor ofThrough Japanese Eyes (4th edition 2007). Heis translator of Requiem for Battleship Yamato(1985), Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (1990),Black Eggs (1994), the autobiographies ofIenaga Saburo (2001), Nakazawa Keiji (2010),and Oishi Matashichi (2011 forthcoming), andwritings of Takeyama Michio (2007) andNambara Shigeru (2010 forthcoming). He haswritten and translated a number of essays forJapan Focus and is a Japan Focus associate.

Recommended citation: Nakazawa Keiji andRichard H. Minear, "Hiroshima: TheAutobiography of Barefoot Gen," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 39-1-10, September 27, 2010.

Notes

1 Gen is pronounced with a hard g and a shorte, as in again, where the second syllable ispronounced to rhyme with then. Hadashimeans barefoot. Hence, “Gen of the Bare Feet.”In the final chapter of this autobiography,Nakazawa explains the origin of the name: “Icalled the protagonist ‘Gen’ in the sense of thebasic composition of humanity so that he’d besomeone who wouldn’t let war and atomicbomb happen again.” (Gen is the first half ofthe compound Genso, meaning chemicalelement.)

2 The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Marukiand Toshi Maruki, ed. John W. Dower and JohnJunkerman (Tokyo: Kodansha International,1985).

3 “Hiroshima” no kūhaku—Nakazawa-keshimatsuki (Tokyo: Nihon tosho sentā, 1987);‘Hadashi Gen’ no jiden (Tokyo: Misuzu, 1995).

4 Nakazawa refers to his mother throughout asMother/Mom, but on August 6 his father criesout to “Kimiyo.” The manga gives her name asKimie. In the manga, she calls her husband“Daikichi.”5 Charles Pellegrino, The Last Train fromHiroshima: The Survivors Look Back (NewYork: Henry Holt, 2010). A New York Timesaccount of the brouhaha that has greetedPellegrino’s book quoted Jeffrey Porter of theUniversity of Iowa, “There’s a hazy linebetween ‘truth’ and invention in creative non-fiction, but good writers don’t have to makethings up.” Motoko Rich, “Pondering GoodFaith in Publishing,” New York Times, March 9,2010, p. C6. For an extended discussion of theissues involved in th is hoax, see my“ M i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g H i r o s h i m a , ”Japanfocus.org.

6 “Barefoot Gen, Japan, and I: The HiroshimaLegacy: An Interview with Nakazawa Keiji,” tr.Richard H. Minear, International Journal ofComic Art 10, no. 2 (fall 2008): 311–12. Anexcerpt from this interview is an appendix tothis book.

7 Pellegrino, The Last Train from Hiroshima,325. Without footnotes, without a list ofinterviewees and the dates of the interviews,Pellegrino’s assertions are impossible toevaluate and hence virtually worthless. At best,those survivor accounts are sixty-year-oldmemories of the event, and intervening eventsand experiences have played a major, ifundocumented, role.

8 This ditty was a take-off on the “BattleshipMarch,” which had the syllable mo twice in itsopening line. Imo is the Japanese word forpotato.

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(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1442207477/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

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(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565847040/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

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