Barefoot Gen, Vol. 3: Life After the Bomb

Product Description Barefoot Gen Volume Three ?"Life After the Bomb" ?picks up the story with Gen, his mother and his baby brother searching for a place to rest in the bomb's aftermath. Facing rejection, hunger, and humiliation, they come to realize that they still have ?and can share ?three crucial possessions: their self-respect, their hope, and their inner strength. Review "[Barefoot] Gen is one of those very few commix that actually pulls off the essential magic track: those little marks on paper come to fully-realized life." About the Author Nakazawa was born in Hiroshima, and was six years old when the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing, except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing. Compelled to tell his story in the memory of his family, Keiji Nakazawa is best known for his epic tragic history Barefoot Gen. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A Note From the Author: The atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above my hometown of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. I was a little over a kilometer away from the epicenter, standing at the back gate of Kanzaki Primary School, when I was hit by a terrible blast of wind and searing heat. I was six years old. I owe my life to the school's concrete wall. If I hadn't been standing in its shadow, I would have been burned to death instantly by the 5,000degree heat flash. Instead, I found myself in a living hell, the details of which remain etched in my brain as if it happened yesterday. My mother, Kimiyo, was eight months pregnant. She was on the second floor balcony of our house, had just finished hanging up the wash to dry, and was turning to go back inside when the bomb exploded. The blast blew the entire balcony, with my mother on it, into the alley behind our house. Miraculously, my mother survived without a scratch. The blast blew our house flat. The second floor collapsed onto the first, trapping my father, my sister Eiko, and my brother Susumu under it. My brother had been sitting in the front doorway, playing with a toy ship. His head was caught under the rafter over the doorway. He frantically kicked his legs and cried out for my mother. My father, trapped inside the house, begged my mother to do something. ...