"I saw it"

When we read Keiji Nakazawa's work in class I was blown away by how powerful it was. On a few occasions while reading it, I found myself almost tearing up, which is something that I rarely experience. I think it is very important that more people read this work, especially in today’s day and age, where the threat of another nuclear war is looming over us. Our current generation doesn’t quite understand how much impact an event like this can have on people. Heck, we haven’t ever really had to deal with anything to this scale first-hand before.

I also enjoyed Hillary Chute’s essay on the work. She brought up points that I would have never thought of, such as the bomb leaving a “photographic” imprint in of itself, and the author’s need to make marks and document parts of the event by drawing. I found the overall work to be very interesting as well. It is a heavy story told and experienced by a child; his formative years were defined by chaos and tragedy. A first-person account like this really shows just how much of an impact this event had on people, more than any work of fiction or general facts could ever try to convey. The work is honest and straightforward; nothing was sugar-coated, which is something that I believe is important to get the author’s message across. Humanity must be able to look back on these events, acknowledge, address, and analyze them, so as to not repeat the same mistakes.