Message from rspringer

[Anonymous]

This 1983 animated film about a young boy who experiences the horrors of Hiroshima is gripping and powerful. The story begins with a poor family undergoing the deprivations and sacrifices that most Japanese people experienced toward the end of World War II. It centers on Keiji Nakazawa (Barefoot Gen), a six-year old boy in August 1945 and his life as it moves from hope to despair and on to a forced maturity. This story is anti-war autobiography written by Nakazawa himself, although it seems less political than it could have been from a viewpoint of Japanese and American relations.

Gen grew up with a father who blamed the Japanese military establishment for the deprivations of the war and was steadfastly anti-war at a time when most Japanese were gearing up to fight and hold onto their island nation to the death. Gen lost his father, two brothers (one just days old), and his sister in the Hiroshima blast. The infant child died due to the malnourisment they experienced in the days after the bombing. After the bombing Gen is now the "man of the house," where he nourishes his mother back to health and works hard in the days after the bombing to earn money, along with an adoptive orphaned child who looks like a carbon copy of his late younger brother.

This film is very graphic and tries to accurately portray what actually happened durring the bomb blast and its aftermath. To some people (myself included), the images are very disturbing and it shows the horrible effects of the bombs blast at the time of the blast and in the aftermath. Nakazawa goes to great lengths to portray the horrors of the war and ends the film with a statement of the wars effects on Japan and on all of humanity. He is not overbearing, but he lets the images speak loudly to the horrors of a nuclear nightmare.

It is a film that I would highly recommend as part of a nuclear war discussion or a discussion about the ending of World War II in a World History course. I have not been able to find a rating for this flm, but I believe I would want my students to get permission to view it from their parents because of the graphic scenes that are associated with it. It would probably carry an R rating here in the United States, but I would highly recommend it for its value in showing the horrors of war and the possibilities we face in our future.