Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa created Ore wa Mita (translated into English as I Saw It), an eyewitness account of the atomic-bomb devastation in Japan, for Monthly Shōnen Jump in 1972.
[5] A mix of pressure from Shonen Jump editors and his increasingly pacifist views led him to finally begin to write his story in Barefoot Gen, with the first issue debuting in 1973.
When he is drunk at a mandatory combat drill and talks back to his instructor, the Nakaokas are branded as traitors and become subjects to harassment and discrimination by their neighbors.
To restore his family's honor, Gen's older brother Koji joins the Imperial Navy against Daikichi's wishes.
Gen leaves her to find rice, and his mother adopts Ryuta, an orphan who looks just like his younger brother Shinji.
After Gen returns to their burnt-out home and retrieves the remains of his father and siblings, he and his family move in with Kimie's friend Kiyo.
A man hires him to look after his brother Seiji, who has been burnt severely from head to toe and lives in squalor.
The orphans build a makeshift house with Gen, who lives with them with an old man cast away by his relatives for being too ill from radiation to work.
The commission rewards corrupt doctors with medicine in exchange for referrals, and Gen sees boys fishing skulls from the river to sell to the ABCC.
Gen asks Mr. Pak for sugar cubes to put American jeeps and trucks out of commission, creating work for Japanese mechanics.
As she talks about her arranged marriage to their father, whom she grew to love, and how people who were against the war were tortured and killed even before it had started, Gen determines to earn money to send his mother to visit Kyoto one last time.
He is determined to bring her body to Tokyo so that General MacArthur can see it, apologize for using the bomb, and promise to never do so again.
Natsue dies of colorectal cancer on December 30, 1950, the day MacArthur convinces President Truman to plan to use nuclear weapons in Korea.
He accidentally ruins a rush-job sign and promises to fix it for free, but the grandfather offers to take over and begins teaching Gen about perspective.
On Bloody May Day that year, unauthorized demonstrators clashed with police outside the Imperial Palace; a special August 6 magazine issue shocked Japan with never-before-seen photos of the bombing devastation.
At his graduation ceremony, Gen protests the singing of the national anthem and details the emperor's war crimes.
Her father tells her that she is the one important thing in his life; he dreams of seeing her married to the perfect husband and giving him grandchildren.
Mitsuko says that she considers herself a murderer because when the bomb was dropped, she (a small child) could not carry her injured mother and ran for her own life; Gen also left his father, sister, and brother.
Musubi has gone through the savings and tries to break into the bar to get drugs, but is beaten up and left for dead; he makes it back to the orphans before he dies.
The themes of Barefoot Gen cover grief, discrimination, criticism of nationalism, the dangers of nuclear warfare, and the abuse of refugees.
[6][7] The later chapters turn their focus to how survivors struggled to live after the bombing of Hiroshima, including the discrimination that drove characters into crime.
[10] Takayuki Kawaguchi (川口 隆行, Kawaguchi Takayuki), author of "Barefoot Gen and 'A-Bomb Literature': Remembering the Nuclear Experience" (「はだしのゲン」と「原爆文学」 ――原爆体験の再記憶化をめぐって, "Hadashi no Gen" to "Genbaku Bungaku"—Genbaku Taiken no Saikiokuka o Megutte), believes that the characters of Katsuko and Natsue modify the Hiroshima Maiden narrative of Black Rain; although they are courageous, they are severely scarred physically and mentally.
He began the project in 1992 as an exchange student at the Hiroshima University Graduate School of Letters, where he completed his master's and doctorate degrees.
[18] New Society Publishers began to release a second English-language version of the series in graphic novel format (as Barefoot Gen: The Cartoon Story of Hiroshima) in 1988.
British theatre director Bryn Jones traveled to Japan in 1994 for Nakazawa's permission to adapt the series' first volume for the stage.
Jones returned to Sheffield to prepare the production's research, design, and dramatization with the Crucible company, Tatsuo Suzuki, and Fusako Kurahara.
Nakazawa traveled to the UK to attend final rehearsals, and gave post-show talks after the opening performances.
The production received a Japan Festival Award in 1997 for outstanding achievement in furthering the understanding of Japanese culture in the United Kingdom.
The activist community used it as “an instrument in the struggle against nuclear weapons” as well as the “politically charged atmosphere of a country coming to terms with defeat in Vietnam”.
[23] The stark picture provided by the comic of being a survivor of Hiroshima lends credibility and usefulness to the activists movements.