Volume eight opens in 1950. Gen is now in middle school, where he meets both a progressive-minded schoolteacher at odds with his conservative superiors, and a brilliant but cynical classmate who challenges the teacher's-- and Gen's-- values at every turn. Gen also finds himself confronting the corrosive effects of drugs and the arms industry on postwar Hiroshima society. With the Korean War offering new business opportunities, a new generation of death merchants holds sway in Japan. Gen, his mentor, and peace-minded citizens are forced to struggle against red-baiting school officials, violent nationalists, and government censorship.