Hiroshima Hell and Historic Bikini
Since I came back from Japan last month while attending the 2010 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, I've found myself constantly drawing and painting mushroom clouds. The conference, the stories and history I heard there, the images that were etched into my mind by speaker after speaker, were full of mushroom clouds, and not just those from Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but those from elsewhere as well. Although only two nuclear bombs have been used against populations as explicit acts of war, hundreds of nuclear tests, above and below ground have taken place in the Pacific, the Continental US, Siberia, China, India and Pakistan. For populations who live in those areas, such as the peoples from the Marshall Islands of Bikini and Rogelap, these "peaceful" testing of nuclear missiles may have well been acts of war. In Hadashi no Gen, or Barefoot Gen, a manga written and illustrated by Keiji Nakazawa who was a survivor of the atomic blast in Hiroshima, t