Hiroshima (18 page)

The area around this store was also the site of gangster fights. In summer these thugs swaggered about, sunglasses glittering, in bright aloha shirts and loud, colored belly bands. Although Hiroshima hoisted the banner “Peace City Reconstruction,” Hiroshima gangster fights increased dramatically; it was an ironic Hiroshima, the desire for peace coexisting with murder. Outwardly, year by year the scars left by the atomic bomb were covered over, and it became a gaudy city, but inwardly, the excruciating groans from the atomic bomb and its aftereffects were pushed deep into the background.

At our house, too, we installed shutters and sliding screens to divide the rooms, and our furniture increased by two or three items. We installed classy mats on our floors, and it became a bit more like home.

As for the lyric “Life Is Short” of the
Gondolier's Song
that Mom sang when she was in a good mood, little by little her singing grew more beautiful. A man proposed to Mom. Worried lest Mom abandon us and run off, we were unbearably uneasy. Each time he appeared, I glared at him. I was overjoyed to hear Mom's reply, “I definitely won't remarry until the children are on their own!” But the unease remained, and mornings as soon as I opened my eyes, I looked at the sliding screen into the kitchen. When I saw it dyed red by the light of the stove and Mom silhouetted against the light, I relaxed.

Mom and K
o
¯
ji kept working as hard as they could, but we were still poor. I was so struck by the pathos of Mom's working from early to late that I wanted to go right out and get a job and earn money so things would improve a bit. But on being convinced that my job prospects would suffer if I didn't complete compulsory education, I went to school, albeit reluctantly.

The Korean War broke out (1950), and suddenly the metal industry prospered. Lead, copper, and brass rose in value and began to sell for a lot. I ran about the ruins of Hiroshima, eyes peeled, looking for metal. The money from that went for my own school materials, drawing manga, movie admissions, and the like. I couldn't say to Mom, “Give me money.” As a fifth grader, I had the spirit of independence, of providing for myself, and I was no mean worker. I was confident I could support myself.

Realizing that in order to make manga storylines I needed to read more, I went often to the rental libraries and consumed novels of all kinds. I read Yoshikawa Eiji's historical novels, and they set my fifth-grade heart racing. I admired the clever structure of
Miyamoto Musashi
, and I read Osaragi Jir
o
¯
's
Demon of
Kurama
and Nomura Kod
o
¯
's
Zenigata Heiji
utterly enthralled.
[15]

The school still had no library, so each of us brought in his own books, and we made a class library. It was only a few books, and it was hard to wait your turn. The grade school shared the building with a junior high, so there were morning and afternoon sessions. But as schools were built in the various parts of Hiroshima, the number of pupils decreased, glass was set in the window frames, the twisted metal was cleared from the schoolyard, the buildings repaired, and finally the atmosphere became a school-like one, of going to school and learning. No sooner had this happened than I graduated. I said my good-byes both to the milk supplied by the Occupation army and to the school lunch's single roll. Because the milk was supplied by America, I'd thought it was full of nutrition, so I'd downed even what others left in their cups.

I have only bitter, unhappy memories of that school. A particularly sad memory was of the sports days that began in the fall. The lunch break was truly tough. On this day, people made fancy box lunches, and classmates scattered to their families in the stands, gobbled down their
sushi
and scrambled eggs, and talked and laughed happily with their families. Watching them was very hard. My lunchbox held barley rice, and it was barley bran—unhulled at that—what people fed to cows and other livestock. I squeezed hard, trying to make that barley into rice balls, but it crumbled and slipped between my fingers and wouldn't hold together. When it finally hardened, I wrapped it in paper and brought it to school, but I wasn't brave enough to unwrap it and eat it in front of people. It was too different from their lunches.

The Honkawa was just below the playground, so I'd climb down the riverbank and, conscious of being watched, force that lunch down quickly. I was sad, unbearably sad. “Had Dad lived, I wouldn't have to be so bitter.” I too wanted desperately to have a lunch I could spread out and eat grandly in the presence of others. But I'd seen Mom working herself to the bone, so there was no way I could say, “Make me a lunch I won't be ashamed to eat in public.” I resented the school that forced us to bring lunches. If the school let us go home for lunch, I thought, I wouldn't have to have such hateful, sad thoughts. Each time sports day came, I separated myself from all the others, climbed down the bank of the Honkawa, and ate my lunch alone. How long those lunch hours seemed!

I resisted in more ways than one, so I was scolded often by the teachers. I thought I never wanted to see again the hateful faces of the vice principal and teachers who summoned me to the teachers' room, pulled my ears, bounced my head off the wall, and threw heartless words at me: “Bad eggs like you are sure to wind up in jail! I guarantee it!” So I was very happy to finish.

We were divided up by sections of the city, and I entered Eba Junior High. And we were driven out of the Takaj
o
¯
we had grown used to.

The death of Tomoko takes place late in volume IV. It includes one of the most lyrical, most beautiful panels of the entire work. This excerpt begins with Gen watching as Tomoko's makeshift coffin burns and remembering August 6, Tomoko's birth, and some happier times. The stunning two-page panel of the cremation on the beach echoes the scene Nakazawa drew especially for the autobiography. (Remember that both images have been flipped.)

Volume IV concludes with Gen's discovery that his hair is growing back and the blossoming of wheat in a nearby field. Gen remembers what his father had said back on page 1 of volume I: “Boys, I want you to grow up just like this wheat grows.” Grasping a stalk of wheat in his left hand, Gen says, “That's right! I'd forgotten what Papa said! I've gotta be strong . . . just like this wheat. No matter what happens, I won't give up! I'll be strong. Papa, I won't forget! I'll grow strong, whatever it takes! I promise!”