Showa 1944-1953: A History Of Japan

"Shigeru Mizuki endures much in Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan, the third volume in his autobiographical graphic novel. Stationed in New Guinea at the end of World War II, he’s at the mercy of superiors who lust psychopathically for heroic death (both their subordinates’ and their own). He’s laid low with malaria and even loses an arm, then faces the privations of the postwar period. Mizuki has plenty of bitterness, but the overarching mood is one of gratitude. He owes his survival, he says, to “some magical thread of destiny.”"