War is a victorious, perhaps bitter, maybe a painful playground for adults. In war, we imagine soldiers moving to shoot their enemies, nurses rushing to heal the injured, politicians and generals posing in front of battle plans, and civilians running away from the crossfire. Our memories of war are ingrained with images of adults trying to make sense out of that chaos. For years we have been surrounded by timeless photographs and movies about that war that to this day, we envision the war strongly as an adult’s world.
But what about the children? Where is the child’s place in our social memory of the Pacific war?
Finding the child’s place in social memory entails an understanding of social memory and the value of children’s experiences in relation to the grand historical World War II narrative. Their frail voices in World War II histories speak of how much their war experiences have been neglected. However, as these children find their voices as adults, the recollection of their World War II experience as children becomes unbearably loud.
These are the memories of three Japanese children during the war against the images of Japanese childhood as constructed by Japan’s propaganda machinery. The memories of Keiji Nakazawa, Osamu Tezuka, and Shigeru Mizuki present a different story of the Pacific War —providing a fresh yet powerful social memory that makes us question on how war affects people at all ages.