Character Analysis Of Barefoot Gen, By Keji Nakagawa

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“Barefoot Gen,” is a Japanese manga written by Keji Nakazawa, which shows the hardships Japan’s citizens went through during World War II. Throughout the comic Nakazawa illustrates the lives of a poor family and the hardships they faced during the war. In America people are told they have the freedom to express their opinions and not be ridiculed or punished for their actions. However, during World War II graphic comics were made about the axis, showing superheroes fighting the axis dictators. Americans are taught about the Holocaust that occurred in Germany during World War II, however, many are unaware of the Holocaust that was happening in Japan. In the beginning of the comic readers are introduced to the Nakaoka family, a lower-class family …show more content…

There were scenes in “Barefoot Gen,” that showed a mother and her daughter jumping off a cliff as American troops approached them and a soldier huddling a bunch of school children around him and slamming a grenade on the ground. Like how Nazi soldiers were believed that killing millions of Jews was the right thing to do. The air raids that Japan went through daily were caused the amount of deaths that the gas chambers did in the concentration camps. Except the napalms caused damage that is no person can ever forget, an elderly woman recounts the story of her daughter frantically digging a hole in the street to save her children from the napalm, unfortunately her and her children were burned to death. The atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima towards the end of the novel created graphic pictures that were probably horrifying the witness first hand, skin was melting off people from the blast and those trapped in buildings were being burned alive. Different accounts of survivors back up the horror that they witnessed firsthand, a man named Junko’s told his story and he said “Some were naked, their clothes burnt off them. They walked along with their arms raised and something hanging off them that looked like nylon stockings. It was their burnt flesh peeling away.” (Junko, Surviving Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb). Like the gas chambers that were used in concentration camps, in the sense of the number of deaths both weapons

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