Barefoot Gen

From OtakuWiki

Synopsis

Gen Nakaoka and his brother Shinji just happen to be your average young boys – if their average life just happens to be during the last days of World War II. Life for Gen, Shinji and his family happens to be just one struggle after another; more so since, because of his father's rejection of government propaganda regarding the war with the United Nations, the family is regarded more-or-less as traitors. Food is scarce, which is a problem for Gen's pregnant mother. However, despite all the hardships the family is forced to endure, Gen tries to live a happy life in the face of it all.

However, life changes drastically - and horribly - on August 6, 1945, when the Nakaoka family's hometown, Hiroshima, is destroyed in the first of the two atomic bomb attacks! Now Gen and his family now have to endure a new set of hardships, mostly the destruction of their home – and the future scourge of radiation poisoning from the attack!

The second film takes place four years after the end of the war, for Gen and his family, the horror is still strong. Hiroshima is still in ruins, and Gen is working in-between school salvaging scrap metal in order to obtain food for his family. His mother is combating the effects of radiation poisoning, and Gen and Shinji are daily seeing a lot of their friends and other children, most of them orphans, dying from the same affliction.

This movie is based upon the manga created by Kenji Nakazawa, himself a Hiroshima survivor.