Editor’s note: This is the last of a three-part series on “Hadashi no Gen” (Barefoot Gen), Keiji Nakazawa’s manga series themed on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which began running in a comic magazine in June 1973.

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Mikio Miura miraculously survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, just like Gen Nakaoka, the protagonist in Keiji Nakazawa’s autobiographical manga series “Hadashi no Gen” (Barefoot Gen).

Miura, who was a first-year junior high school student, was in a central part of the city on Aug. 6, 1945, to tear down buildings to prevent fire from spreading in the event of an air raid.

About 410 schoolmates and teachers had gathered there, but Miura was the only one who survived after the atomic bomb exploded.

A button on his jacket made the difference between life and death.

While students were waiting for roll call, Miura noticed that the button, which teachers said the emperor had entrusted to students, was almost coming off.

“I will get a beating if I am caught,” he thought.

He burrowed into an air raid shelter by himself.

When he was about to sew the button back on with needle and thread, a flash of light suddenly appeared.

Miura, now 90, said he has been haunted by survivor’s guilt throughout his life.

Several years after the war, he visited a schoolmate’s home, wondering if he might be alive.

The boy's mother shouted angrily at him.

“You and my son both attended the same school and went to the same place (on that day),” she said, shedding tears. “Why are you alive and why is my son dead?”

From that day on, Miura never looked for his schoolmates or spoke about the atomic bombing.

“My schoolmates instantaneously lost their lives filled with hope and expectations,” he said. “I kept having dreams in which people would ask  behind my back, ‘Why are you alive?’”

When he was around 60, Miura began recounting his experiences at the request of an acquaintance.

He continued to tell his stories until 10 years ago, stifling his emotional pain every time he spoke.

“I thought it was my duty to pass down what those who perished went through and protect the peace,” he said. “That was the very least I could do for them as a way of atonement.”

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atomic bombings left both mental and physical scars on young survivors.

In “Hadashi no Gen,” Gen is ridiculed at his school because his hair fell out due to the effects of radiation from the atomic bomb.

Kenji Hayashida, 85, has been traumatized by keloid scars and hair loss caused by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Hayashida, who was 7, was climbing a tree with his cousin and another friend when the atomic bomb exploded over the city on Aug. 9, 1945.

The cousin died three days later. Hayashida's mother and two brothers were killed in the atomic bombing.

Hayashida suffered severe burns on the right side of his head as well as on his right hand and leg. It took four years before he could freely move his body.

Hair did not grow on the right half of his head and keloid scars remained on his right leg. He was the only one with such aftereffects of the bomb at his school.

At the awkward age of 11, Hayashida would always keep his hat on and wear long trousers even in the middle of summer.

He found employment after graduating from a junior high school, but he continued to wear a hat and tried to hide the scars on his leg.

At one time, Hayashida was deeply shamed when a senior colleague called him "baldy" at a dance party held by the company.

He was tormented by a chronic sense of inferiority, but his life changed after he met his future wife, Yasuko.

They got married in 1964 and had a daughter in 1971.

As his thoughts were occupied by someone more dear to him than anything else, Hayashida became less worried about his appearance. He did not wear his hat anymore.

Hayashida also began to think about other people’s well-being.

In 1981, he visited a slum in the Philippines. He was reminded of growing up poor when he saw children there carrying water and not being able to go to school.

He set up a group to offer scholarships to needy children in the Philippines and 130 have received the grants.

At a church, Hayashida prays for people killed in the atomic bombing.

“I feel that I have been given the happiness that those victims would have enjoyed,” he said. “That is why I am working for other people on behalf of those who lost their lives.”

In “Hadashi no Gen,” children who lost their parents in the atomic bombing steal food to survive and are taken into police custody.

A large number of children were orphaned by the atomic bombings, although estimates varied widely from 2,000 to 6,500 in Hiroshima alone.

Shoso Kawamoto, who died at the age of 88 last year, was one of those so-called “atomic bomb orphans.”

In April 1945, Kawamoto, an elementary school sixth-grader, evacuated to a temple in northern Hiroshima Prefecture, more than 50 kilometers from central Hiroshima.

One of his older sisters came to pick him up three days after the atomic bomb detonated over the city. 

He was told that his mother, younger brother and younger sister were burned to death while holding on to each other at the family’s home near ground zero.

The remains of his father and his other older sister were never found.

Kawamoto started living with his older sister, who was working at Hiroshima Station. He spent the day with other orphans who gathered outside the station.

The children, always hungry and thirsty, would shove shreds of discarded newspapers into their mouths and lick pebbles. They died one by one.

His only sibling also passed away six months later.

Kawamoto was taken in by another family. But he ran away when he was 23 after his marriage proposal was turned down on the grounds that he was a hibakusha.

He felt abandoned and became desperate, indulging in fighting and gambling.

But he remembered his mother telling him, “You can do it if you have the will.”

Her words of confidence in her young son helped Kawamoto pull his life together.

He went on to run a food company in Okayama Prefecture.

After he turned 70, he began recounting his experiences to visitors to Hiroshima at the suggestion of an acquaintance, who was also an atomic bomb survivor.

In July 2021, a year before his death, Kawamoto spoke before a group of students from Hyogo Prefecture, dragging his right foot, which was partially paralyzed from a stroke.

“I hope you will become someone who will work to protect the peace of your own free will when you grow up,” he said.

(This article was compiled from reports by Rikuri Kuroda, Emika Terashima and Shohei Okada.)