I highly recommend Barefoot Gen to be a companion piece with the BBC documentary Hiroshima; also with any Socials unit about the WW2 Pacific War and any relevant docs about it. I teach it every three years or so across my ELL English 2 or 3 and ELL Socials 2 or 3 classes with English and Socials activities divided accordingly.
Note that many students from East Asia still carry the very strong prejudices which continue to exist between Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Myanmar since world war 2. So I start off with studying the rise and conquest of the Japanese Empire and then proceed to the Pacific War and finally Nagasaki Hiroshima. Understandably, this journey raises a lot of emotions which uhave to be gauged and challenged throughout. Usually, by the end of all this, most of the students come to realize that war is Hell and something that is to be avoided at all costs. East Asian students start to understand the full tragedy of how World War 2’s legacy still continues to influence the region today. Even as Trump challenges North Korea.
The triggers are of course, it is two months study of war and human atrocity. It’s heavy, heavy stuff. The true stories of the BBC series almost exactly parallel those in Barefoot Gen. Also be aware that the anime version of the bombing of Hiroshima is quite disturbing – more so than in the live action series and documentary. It can be found on YouTube.
Another interesting thing about this study is that afterwards almost nobody views movies and videos about weapons and war tech in quite the same “that’s so cool” way again.
I only teach the 1st and 1st half of the second manga (where Shinji’s doppelgänger arrives. Students often seek out the rest on their own.
Barefoot Gen
Japanese manga series
Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン Hadashi no Gen) is a Japanese manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa’s own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen Nakaoka lives with his family. After Hiroshima is destroyed by atomic bombing, Gen and other survivors are left to deal with the aftermath. It ran in several magazines, including Weekly Shōnen Jump, from 1973 to 1985. It was subsequently adapted into three live action film adaptations directed by Tengo Yamada, which were released between 1976 and 1980. Madhouse released two anime films, one in 1983 and one in 1986. In 2007, a live action television dramaseries adaptation aired in Japan on Fuji TV over two nights, August 10 and 11.
Hiroshima: BBC History of World War II
BBC docudrama
Hiroshima is a BBC docudrama that premiered as a television special on 5 August 2005, marking the eve of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.[1]The program was aired on the Discovery Channel and BBC Americain the United States. The documentary features historical reenactments using firsthand eyewitness accounts and computer-generated imagery of the explosion. The film won an Emmy and three BAFTA awards in 2006.[3]