I Saw It

Ore wa Mita
Genre	Drama, Biography, Anti-war
Manga
Written by	Keiji Nakazawa
Published by	Shueisha (magazine) Holp Shuppan (tankōbon)
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Jump
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	1972[1] – 1972
Volumes	0 (U.S. : 1)

Ore wa Mita (おれは見た, oré wa mita, literally - "I Saw It") is a one-shot manga by Keiji Nakazawa.^[1] Ore wa Mita first appeared in a special issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump called "Monthly Shōnen Jump", which later became it's own separate monthly manga magazine of that name, while the tankōbon form is published by Holp Shuppan.^[2] Ore wa Mita follows the biographies of Keiji Nakazawa from his youngest days in post-war Hiroshima, up until his adult-hood. His editor urged him to write a longer manga based on Ore wa Mita, which became the manga Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen).^[1] The one-shot was released in a pamphlet sized issue by Educomics (Educational Comics), under the title I Saw It: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima: A Survivor's True Story.^[1][2]

Ore wa Mita starts with Keiji Nakazawa as an adult looking back at how his mother was really never happy, the earliest day he could remember were back in 1941 during an air raid: Keiji's mother woke him up, and the family rushed into a wet shelter. Keiji hated it, and mosquitos would bite him. There was very little food, so Keiji would sneak raw rice from their storage bin. His family painted wooden clogs for money, and his father did a more traditional Japanese style of painting. Keiji wanted to learn painting from his father, and asked him how to draw a soldier. His father would hug him and rub his scratchy wiskers on his him. Also some of his happiest times were catching grasshoppers, and going to buy dumplings. Keiji's brother Yasuto worked in the Kure Shipyard and welded the hull of famous battle ships. His brother Shoji left to the Group Evacuation, although he wrote letters saying he was so hungry he ate the beans in his pillow. On August 6, 1945, he witnessed the event which left a crater in Japanese history... In the morning the Nakazawa family rushed to the shelter, the plane left, Keiji thought it might have been a scout plane. The family got out of the shelter and Kimiyo (Keiji's mom) brought up the fact that it hurts when she runs in the condition of pregnancy, Keiji and Susumu argued about who would be the big brother and boss their "little brother" around. Keiji had to leave for school, not realizing that was the last time he would get to see his father, sister, and little brother. Keiji looked in the sky and there was a B-29, the plane from earlier that morning had made a U-turn and came back over thier prefecture. At 8:15 a.m the plane dropped a atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Keiji woke up with a nail through a wooden plank stuck in his left cheek. He got up and noticed a dead woman, her face was melted from the radiation. The schoolyard wall blocked the heat from getting to young Keiji, although he was spared with two mild burns. It looked as if everyone had turned into monsters and kept asking for water. Keiji ran to his house as it flamed up, his neighbor who had glass shards covering the whole side of her body told him that his mother was okay and she was waiting at the trolly tracks at Yamaguchi Street. Keiji ran to the station, and his mom had just recently gave birth to a baby girl. Kimiyo was drying clothes and the flash came and blew the roof down, she tried to get her family out from under the wooden beams, none of them would even budge, Keiji's sister (abviosly dead) didn't even make a sound. Kimiyo wanted to die with them, a man told her to run, but she refused, finally he got her to go, and she ended up at the trolly tracks. Pedestrians poisoned with the radiation, dragged thier skins, the sound of people asking for water echoed throughout all of Hiroshima. Keiji and Yasuto were sent to go dig up thier families bones. In August 15, 1945, the war ended and Keiji's brother Yasuto came back from the evacuation. The Nakazawa's had no milk for the baby, so they fed her rice broth. Later the baby died, and they cremated her on the beach. Keiji started going back to school, and children would make fun of a bald spot on his head from the radiation. Houses started being built in Hiroshima, Keiji kept his eye open for food, and collected trash and glass trying to see if it could become useful items to sell. When Keiji first laid eyes on the the manga Shin-Takarajima (New Treasure Island) by Osamu Tezuka, it inspired him to start making manga. He was absorbed in manga, the bookstores were filled with manga magazines, and the media of manga started getting immensely popular. He also liked going to the movie theater, which helped him improve on his cartooning. When Keiji entered middle school, he became even more fond of manga, in his school he weeded the fields more than he studied. A man was talking about remarrying with Kimiyo, but she refused and said it would be harsh on the siblings. Keiji started bringing rice as a topping for vegetables he would steal on his way to school. Keiji had harsh memories of school, especially on field dys where children would bring sushi lunch boxes and Keiji would bring a piece of bread. In middle school he sent a manga he had drawn to a magazine called Funny-Book.^[3] He only got his name in small print inside the magazine, but eventually in got printed in Funny-Book. Keiji wanted to get a job that would improve on his cartooning skills, so he got a job as a sign painter, his boss was a war veteran who would punch him to hurry up. He finally got 4000 yen and bought things he craved like bananas and bean cakes. Even though being a sign painter was hard, he still kept creating manga. He got a second prize from sixteen page manusript he sent to Funny-Book. With his payment he bought a pallet which he still uses till this day. Keiji was given full responsibility of the sign painting business, which made him a bit cocky, he got drunk and got into a lot of fights. On a new-year's eve, Kimiyo suffered a hemorrage, Keiji went out, and bought all the medicine he could. Keiji wanted to give his mother a few good memories, bit-by-bit Kimiyo gained heath back. Manga started getting even harder to Keiji in that period, and then he moved to Tokyo to start his manga career. He wanted to see his mom better by the time he got back, then he wanted to give her a tour of Tokyo. Keiji was twenty-two when he left, and he had an anxiety to jump out of the train. His editor Fumio Ishī, gave him a job as an assistant to Daiji Kazumine. Manga started to be even more difficult, after a year and a half, he got his manga serialized in Shōnen Pictorial, and in Weekly Shōnen King, and he was also an assistant to Naoki Tsuji. He continued as an assistant, and also had his own manga in Shōnen Monthly and We. Keiji finally returned to Hiroshima to meet with Kimiyo, she had recovered but she still couldn't walk freely. Kimiyo cried and said that she had every magazine that had his manga in it, she had also read them many times over. He told Kimiyo to get back on her feet, so that he could show her all the sights of Tokyo. Keiji went back to Hiroshima, and on that trip, he met a woman who he later married. Kimiyo said that since Keiji got married her life was complete, yet, Keiji wanted to make her life easier and bring her to Tokyo. When keiji and his wife went back to Tokyo, he got a letter saying that his mom died. Keiji was mad that his mother died when things were just starting to get better, his wife was just about to have a baby, and Keiji wanted her to fold her first grand child. They took the ashes out of the cremator, and there was just white dust and no bones. The bones desinigrated from the radiation, this angered Keiji and made him want to fight the atomic bomb through his manga. Keiji is standing by the pond he was standing by at the beginning of the story, it's five years later after Kimiyo has died now. Keiji walking away, passes by a child dropping his ice cream on the floor and asking for cake and a couple kissing on a bench by the park. Keiji wished he could have been born in a better time like it was that day. He notices on his watch that it's almost the deadline for Weekly Shōnen Jump, so he goes back to his house to get to work.