"Barefoot Gen"

Today was one of those days where I felt really bad for being from the U.S.

Nothing really serious, mind you. Just one of those, "oh right, we dropped an atomic bomb on these people and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children" moments. We watched a movie today in class called "Barefoot Gen" which is an animated movie about a fictional family that lived in Hiroshima during the time when the bomb was dropped. It was dubbed in English (rather poorly I might add), and would have been entirely comical if not for the very graphic and disturbing nature of the video. We watched the skin melt off of people as they were exposed to the radiation of the blast, eyes falling out of heads and screaming until they were only ashy mounds in the earth. We watched most of the eight-year-old protagonist's family burn to death under the remains of their house, including a four year old brother who couldn't understand what was happening and kept repeating "It's so hot Gen! Why won't you help me?!" Women with dead babies, maggots eating people's skin, people screaming... and all the while this little boy is just skipping around, watching his hair fall out of his head and his baby sister starve to death from malnutrition. I know that its just a movie, but by the end of class a few of the Japanese students (including our graduate level TA) were crying, and the rest of the Westerners were just feeling like crap. Historical justification aside, its very difficult to not feel like crap for being from the country that dropped the bomb on the first place. And I dare anyone to watch that movie and not feel even a little remorseful at the end.