anyway if you want some actually enlightening narrative-driven accounts on the subject to supplement whatever hagiographic nonsense chris nolan shits out in july, i cannot recommend Keiji Nakazawa’s seminal manga Barefoot Gen enough. it’s largely an autobiographical account of his experiences as an a-bomb survivor and it’s absolutely harrowing. doubly important considering that it is as critical of imperial japan as it is of the american occupation forces. Nakazawa’s father was an anti-war activist who was routinely targeted by the imperial government and he extensively discusses colonialism and war slavery in korea and china and the evils of emperor worship in the manga
it’s been described as the “Maus of the pacific theater” which is not at all inaccurate considering that the present-day ultranationalist right in Japan regularly tries to ban it in schools for its anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-nationalist themes.
huge CWs for gore/violence, sexual assault, nationalist racism, a whole lot more so tread carefully but it really is an essential read for anyone interested in atomic history