Mr. Pak, the Korean neighbor from Volume 1 makes a surprise visit, and hands Gen 100,000 yen and American milk. He's been doing well on the black market. Gen returns to his family with the money, but finds Tomoko is dead. He refuses to believe it, then refuses to speak, until he discovers that his hair is growing back, and remembers what his father told him, that he must keep growing, like wheat that grows straight and tall after being trampled. Volume 5: The Never-Ending War In December 1947, Gen is in school when Ryuta appears, who has become a juvenile delinquent, doing odd jobs for the Yakuza. Gen meets orphans with Ryuta, including Katsuko, a girl scarred by burns from the bomb. As an orphan and a hibakusha, she is subject to discrimination and cannot go to school; Gen lends her his books and promises to teach her himself. On December 7, the Emperor visits Hiroshima, and the streets are lined with children waving homemade flags. Ryuta and other orphans learn to shoot a pistol since the head gangster, Masa, wants them to kill his rival, 'Mitey'. Donguri shoots Mitey and is killed. Gen encourages the others flee, but Masa follows them. Ryuta shoots Masa in the shoulder and his henchman in the leg to get them to let them go. They have built their own house, along with Gen, who doesn't wish to be a burden on his mother, where they live with an old man cast away by his relatives for being too ill from radiation to work. For New Year's Day, 1947, rice cakes are distributed free, but the true cost is to cheer for the Emperor who got Japan into the war, a cost too high for Gen to pay. He defies his teacher, speaking out his father's beliefs. The same local official who had called Gen's father a traitor for being for peace, who Gen then rescued the day the Bomb was dropped, who then refused to help free Gen's father, brother, and sister, is now running for office claiming he was always for peace. Gen exposes him, and is thrown out of the meeting. Gen's mother is ill, and the doctor says the only way to help her is to take her to the American-run Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), but Gen and his mother are against accepting American help. His older brother