Senka no Naka no Kodomotachi (Children in the Flames of War)

By Chihiro Iwasaki, Iwasaki Shoten, 1973
In 1973, Chihiro released a picture book titled, Senka no Naka no Kodomotachi (Children in the Flames of War), to express her protest against the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, which broke out in 1961, is said to have killed 1.5 million people, including civilians, through indiscriminate bombing and spraying of defoliant. In the disastrous war situation reported every day, Chihiro worked on the book despite her poor health. She believed that if she did not do anything, all the children in Vietnam might die. This omnibus work, depicting different stories and scenes of children who lived in the disastrous consequences of the war, while bearing on Chihiro’s own war experience, was the last picture book she completed.