For Keiji Nakazawa, whose works include Japan's best-selling war cartoon, "Barefoot Gen," drawing the atomic bomb attack that took place 60 years ago Saturday was like going through it all over again.

"I was writing Barefoot Gen for a weekly cartoon magazine, so it was like being trapped in the horrifying memories of the atomic explosion week after week. It was just painful," said Nakazawa, 66.

He lost his father, sister and younger brother at once in the nuclear attack on August 6, 1945 that killed some 140,000 people in Hiroshima.

While the children's book narrates the times of six-year-old Gen, it portrays some of the most graphic and sickening effects of the bombing such as melting and burned bodies covered with lice.

"Gen is me. I wrote what I saw and didn't want to sugarcoat war and human suffering. While personally I want to stay away from the atomic experience as much as possible, I believe a cartoon is one tool for us to remember the war experience," Nakazawa said.

Like the boy in the cartoon, six-year-old Nakazawa tried in vain to rescue his father, sister and brother who were trapped in their collapsed house after the attack.

As a raging fire swept through the house, the author and his pregnant mother helplessly watched their loved ones dying. Days later, Nakazawa returned to the burned house and found three skulls.

The book has sold more than six million copies in Japan since its first publication in 1975 and has been translated into English, French, German, Indonesian, Korean and Russian.

"I want my readers to stand up against war and nuclear weapons," Nakazawa said.

-- The movie director --

For director Kazuo Kuroki, 74, making films on the war including on Hiroshima has been an agonizing effort to overcome his guilt. He fled when his classmates died in a US air-raid on the southern island of Kyushu in 1945.

"I always feel guilty for having survived in the US raid. I was working at a factory making war planes and suddenly the US military attacked us. I ran and ran and ran," Kuroki said.

"I saw my friends were helping their dying friends but I kept running. A total of 11 classmates were killed. I have been so traumatized by the experience. But it is my duty as a war survivor to tell painful stories."

Kuroki said he was greatly influenced by French movies including Alain Resnais' 1959 "Hiroshima Mon Amour," a tale based on the Marguerite Duras novel of a 24-hour fling in the devastated city between a young French woman and a Japanese man.

Kuroki's latest film, "The Face of Jizo," is about a young Hiroshima woman's struggle to overcome her guilt for having survived the atomic bombing and her journey to find love and happiness.

Based on the work by renowned Japanese writer and peace activist Hisashi Inoue, the film, which was released in 2004, won 16 movie awards in Japan and has been shown in China and the United States.

"The theme of the movie is to have courage to live. Like the female character in the movie, I, too, must live while harboring tremendous guilt toward my dead friends," Kuroki said.

-- The museum curator --

For Minoru Hataguchi, being the director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has forced him to confront his most painful war memory: losing his father in the nuclear attack before he was even born.

"From birth, I didn't have my father. All my life, I tried to avoid the topic of the atomic bombing," said Hataguchi, 59.

His father was vaporized, with the only remaining mementoes being a burned belt buckle and a pocket watch, which his mother discovered at the train station four days after the bombing and symbolically buried in the absence of a body.

Hataguchi was working in the city's education, public health and taxation bureau when the mayor appointed him in 1997 to head the museum. He recalled feeling completely unprepared.

"As the head of the museum, I had to speak about peace. But honestly speaking, I didn't know what to say. My colleagues suggested I speak about my father," he said.

"It was extremely painful to talk at home and abroad about my own experience. I even dug my father's grave to retrieve his buckle and pocket watch and displayed them when we held an atomic exhibition in India" in 1998.

But just a few days before the exhibition was about to end, India conducted a nuclear test and declared itself an atomic power, a move quickly followed by rival Pakistan.

"I felt very sad and disappointed. It is so hard to convince world leaders that nuclear weapons are horrible and should be abolished for good," Hataguchi said.

Built in 1955, the museum has collected some 18,000 A-bomb items ranging from burned fingernails to a charred lunchbox to a pocket watch with its hands pointing at 8:15 am, the moment the US atomic bomb exploded.

Each year some 1.1 million people visit the peace museum. Some 10 percent of them are foreigners and have included late pope John Paul II, Cuban President Fidel Castro, guerrilla Che Guevara and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.

No US president has visited the museum.

"When I told Mr Castro that Che Guevara had visited the museum, he looked very surprised. I also talked about how my father was killed in the bombing. Before parting, Mr. Castro hugged me three times," Hataguchi said.

"I want visitors to believe that the nuclear horror should never happen again. If Hiroshima does not serve as an appeal to the world against nuclear weapons, what would?"

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