Black Rain The main character of the novel is in a certain sense like me. Mr. Shizuma is a person who is curious about many things and likes to see what reaction people have to every action. Throughout the novel he feels the need to travel to different parts of the city and surrounding communities to see the effects of the unknown bomb. Mr. Shizuma was not only interested in what happened to people in the community, but he was also interested in finding out what the weapon used was called and what it was made of. There were several names given to the bomb throughout the book and he summarizes the names in one paragraph. The name of the bomb had already undergone a series of changes, from the new initial weapon to the new type bomb, secret weapon, new special weapon. -bomb type, high capacity special bomb. That day I learned for the first time to call it an atomic bomb. (Black Rain 282) The importance of the bomb's name may seem irrelevant, but he seems to pause to find out what caused this type of destruction. Something else Mr. Shizuma wants to do is remember every little detail of what happens to everything, from the angle of the house after the bomb to what his wife cooked for dinner with food rationing. He also enjoys writing about how people cured themselves of radiation sickness and what burns and other injuries look and behave. These things are like me in that he doesn't like to forget how things are, wants to see firsthand what the effects are, and is very interested in finding out information about new things he's never seen before. He also enjoys helping people a lot, such as his constant wanderings looking for coal for his community. If it were up to you, would you help your community? I think so. The theme that is very significant for me is that war hurts two different parts of a country. The first concerns the military, which hasn't been talked about much, and then there are the civilians. Civilians have to ration food so that the military can eat, and then they also have to suffer because the bomb dropped was not intended for any military base but to destroy and kill a city. The theme is clear in the sense that it harms civilians much more than it harms the military and that war is very, very cruel. People subjected to rationing had very little to eat, and this amount decreased as the war continued. People were forced to breed carp in small specimens and search for mussels in ponds to obtain any kind of meat. By the end of the war there were no more mussels in any of the many streams and there were no fish in any of the ponds either. The only thing that survived were the eels that were seen moving up the river the day before the surrender. This was a sign of rebirth. It took only a year after the bombing of Hiroshima to surrender and during this time the government did not help any of the people actually affected by the war, the civilians. It was strange that people felt any remorse for losing the war when the government they were supposed to believe in left them homeless and without food. Innocent, unarmed people killed and maimed by a weapon that could kill the entire planet. For what purpose was the bomb dropped? Mr. Shizuma made many remarks that if the opposition had waited a little longer they wouldn't have had to drop the bomb because the country was falling apart internally. It seems to me that the dropping of the bomb was nothing more than a science experiment for the opposition. This is the hidden theme of this novel. The only kind of person who might read this book is someone who is very open-minded to other ideas. For most Americans, the bomb was necessary to stop the war. In the eyes.