ABSTRACT
Nakazawa Keiji was a minor manga artist when he published the first installment of Barefoot Gen in 1973. He concluded the series in 1985 when it had reached ten volumes. Nakazawa was active in the antiwar and antinuclear weapons movement until his death. This chapter presents a passage from his real autobiography, which was published in Japanese in 1987. The passage describes the morning of August 6, 1945, and the immediate aftermath of the bombing. It goes on to describe the oily, black rain that soon fell briefly and he later learned that his father (an artist), sister, and brother were trapped in their house when it collapsed and they burned to death, while their mother was saved. When the bomb exploded, it was pale light like the flash of a flashbulb camera, white at the center, and a great ball of light with yellow and red mixed at its outer edges.
