The List: Movies About the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Movie #3 – Barefoot Gen

Year – 1983

One of the stories told in White Light/Black Rain was that of Keiji Nakazawa. Nakazawa was born in Hiroshima. He was 6-years old when the bomb fell and only his mother and he survived. He would eventually become an artist and tell a fictionalized version of his childhood in a manga called Barefoot Gen. (Well, in English it was called that. In Japanese it was called はだしのゲン. But what good would that do you?)

In 1983 that manga was adapted into an animated film of the same name. It’s a gut-wrenching yet heart-warming tale of family and survival. It can be off-putting at times for Americans unfamiliar with anime films. The art style, to the uninitiated, will appear similar to that of Speed Racer. So some scenes will feel eerily like watching Spritle forage in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.