7.5/10
The Himeyuri were Japanese high school girls used as nurses during the battle of Okinawa, one of the last and most tragic episodes of WWII. Most of them did not make it to the end. Those not killed by diseases or the American bombings immolated themselves (with grenades), not to fall into the enemy hand, victims first and foremost of a foolish nationalism turned into madness.
This book is fictional, but provides a most horrifically realistic depiction of the Himeyuri misfortunes, as maybe only a fictional book can. Machiko Kyo is renewed for her art style, capable of combining the aggressiveness of simplified lines to a very elegant sense of shapes. Her art feels sketchy, but soft. Hence, it fits well the underlying theme here, i.e., the tension between the emotional softness of teen age and the macabre of a war that turns young girls into pieces of flash and fluids scattered along an indifferent sunny beach.
The pace is set by the format, as the story was serialised in fifteen monthly instalments, of twelve pages each. So, every twelve pages a new horror unfolds, as the girls are mowed one after the other. The lyricism of the author is strong but does not completely take over the tone of the book, which remains a no frills depiction of human butchery, how war should be depicted. Speaking of which, as I was finishing reading this news came out that they are making an anime adaptation, I assume in a style inevitably more realistic than the sketchy lines of Kyo. How are they gonna pull it? Visually, this is a terrifying story.
One last thing. I know it would have been unrealistic to produce (at the pace of one chapter per month), but I would have loved to see this story fully coloured, because Machiko Kyo is a great watercolorist.