Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Streamline Pictures
The world changed forever on August 6, 1945. Toward the end of World War II, the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima—the first time a nuclear bomb had ever been used in warfare. Three days later, America dropped a second atomic bomb on the nearby city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on September 2, and the war finally ended.
The employment of nuclear warfare altered the fabric of society. The Cold War followed soon after WWII, the world living in fear of possible nuclear destruction and mass genocide. Although the Cold Wart technically ended decades ago, with nine countries reportedly holding nuclear weapons, there is still plenty of paranoia about nuclear war breaking out. Despite the lingering threat of nukes destroying everything, for the vast majority of the world, the scale of an atomic bomb is utterly unknowable.
That’s not the case for Keiji Nakazawa, who was just six years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on his hometown of Hiroshima. As an adult, full-time cartoonist Nakazawa decided to commit his unshakable memories down through his art. The first volume of his manga Barefoot Gen, based on Nakazawa’s own childhood, was published in 1973. The series ran for over a decade and was adapted into three live-action and two anime films—the best of which, also called Barefoot Gen, premiered July 21, 1983. That was exactly 40 years ago this week, and exactly 40 years before the release of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s new film about the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb.”