Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan continues award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical and historical account of Showa period Japan. This volume recounts the events of the final years of the Pacific War, and the consequences of the war's devastation for Shigeru Mizuki, and the Japanese populace at large. After the surprise attack at Pearl Harbour, Japan and the United States are officially at war. The two rival navies wage a series of micro-wars across the tiny Pacific Islands. From Guadalcanal to Okinawa, Japan slowly loses ground. Finally, the United States unleashes a new and terrible weapon-the atomic bomb. The fallout from the bombs is beyond imagining. On another front, Showa 1944-1953 traces Shigeru Mizuki's own life story across the sweeping changes dur--ing this period. After losing his arm during the brutal fighting, Mizuki struggles to decide where to go: whether to remain on the island as an honoured friend of the local Tolai people or return to the rubble of Japan and take up his dream of becoming a cartoonist. Showa 1944-1953 is a searing condemnation of the personal toll of war from one of Japan's most famous cartoonists.