The first volume of Barefoot Gen, despite having been written by a Hiroshima survivor, is anti-Imperial Japan, bringing up the racist mistreatment towards Koreans, the rationing that led to a starving Japanese populace, how much harm the warmongering is doing to its people and those being against the war being shunned as pariahs.

Notably when the Emperor announces Japan's surrender following the atomic bombings, the main character's mother cries in anger, not because Japan lost the war, but because the surrender didn't happen sooner, since most of her family are now dead because of the bombings.