Barefoot Gen Volume One A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa

Keiji Nakazawa's semi-autobiographical Japanese comic book series Hadashi no Gen has been translated as Barefoot Gen in a 10-volume series. I read Volume 1, and I have immediately requested Volume 2 from my public library. 

Sometimes it's hard for me to sit in a social gathering listening to "normal" conversation when I think that humans have accumulated enough nuclear weapons to destroy themselves hundreds of times over. I hope I never lose that anxiety, and I don't understand people who are blasé about how close we are to destruction at our own hands.

Review: Hiroshima by John Hersey

John Hersey's first version of Hiroshima was published in 1946. This edition included updates on the six survivors he had originally profiled and was published in 1985. It is available through Georgia PINES-participating libraries.

 
Regular readers of this blog know that I am completely appalled by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I see no purpose for any nation or group, particularly one claiming to follow Islam, to possess such weapons.

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than the desperate testimonials of these six survivors is how the author interspersed, as the years went by in the lives of the survivors, landmarks in the spread and development of the world's nuclear arsenal, such as the development of the hydrogen bomb and Indian proliferation. Some survivors tried to educate the world on Hiroshima's lesson, namely that humans must end war. Sadly, the world has so far refused to listen.

Review: Teach Us to Live: Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Diana Wickes Roose

This book can be ordered from Intentional Productions.

Listen to the CD accompanying this book with the recordings of translated testimonies of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I hope no Muslim ever uses the term "Islamic bomb." There's nothing "Islamic" about the bomb, and we should work towards complete nuclear disarmament.

P.S. If you get a chance, watch David Rothauser's Hibakusha, Our Life to Live.