Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa was seven years old and living in
Hiroshima in the early days of August 1945 when the city was
destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the U.S.A. Starting a few
months before that event, the ten-volume saga shows life in Japan
after years of war and privations, as seen through the eyes of
seven-year-old Gen Nakaoka. By Volume Seven, Gen has grown old
enough to think about the legacy of the victims of the atomic
bombing. Picking up from Volume Six, the story opens with Gen
searching for a printer willing to publish an eyewitness account of
the bombing written by "Papa," the journalist who serves
as a father figure to Gen's war orphan friends. By hook and
crook Gen and Ryuta manage to get the book printed and distributed,
only to arouse the wrath of U.S. Army censors, who teach them a
hard lesson about the politics of memory. Meanwhile, Gen's
brother Koji returns home at last, only to find that their mother
is on her deathbed.
