Finally found more info on the author of
Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies), Nosaka Akiyuki. It is an article by Hiroko Cockerill of the University of Queensland, Australia for the journal entitled "Japanese Studies". This article is in an academic journal online that costs $36 to obtain, but worth it, even if only 8 pages long, not counting the last reference page. The title of the article is "
Laughter and Tears: The Complex Narratives of Showa Gesaku Writer Nosaka Akiyuki" 13 Dec 2007
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10371390701685088
Needless to say, it gets much worse, thus the ongoing guilt he suffers, the stroke etc.
Hard to find information on someone that doesn't want to tell it, as she quotes from Noska himself:
QUOTE I have been telling lies all of my life, ever since I can remember. When I was a child I told innocent lies. After I was burned out of house and home at the age of fourteen, I learned how to tell lies simply in order to survive. Now that I can earn enough to keep body and soul together by telling lies, I am unable to distinguish lies from reality. The works included in this book represent part of my lies. My lies will never have an end. (October 2004)
That's from his latest compilation
Shikei choju. This 'lying' is the part of the narrator in his works, spinning his web to trap the reader into his stories. Cockerill compares that aspect rather well, especially when quoting a paragraph from the short story '
Hotaru no haka' in which Seito's voice mixes with the narrator in what seems one long run-on sentence, which Cockerill says runs throughout the short story, but reminds me of the stream of thought of someone near death. Reality and illusion start to blend.
Nosaka's sense of guilt seems to run throughout his works as it ran through that year of the firebombing and his running away. The stories seem to mix a sense of victim with victimizer as Cockerill puts it.
I'll add that I was wrong about his real sister's age. She wasn't 2 years old, but 16 months old when she died. "She suffered a concussion when he hit her in an attempt to stop her crying, and eventually died from malnutrition." So that short story takes place within about 10.5 weeks, I thought it was about 6 months from the anime. I know in the interview on the Ghibli site with the director, Nosaka mentioned how he was relieved in a sense because he was tired of always carrying her around, which makes sense if she was only 13.5 months old when Kobe was firebombed. She probably just learned to walk a little and just started learning a few words. Trying to always steal something to eat, irritated and undergoing the 'anvil' affect of deprogramming from all that imperial BS had to tear the kid apart. Add a starving 'baby' that is always crying and a sense of helplessness....
Rather strong stuff. Our American empire builders have definitely 'programmed' or 'conditioned' the masses, but we haven't had that usual imperial education like the Japanese did, the Germans, the Spartans, Soviets, Chinese etc. That makes it harder to comprehend if you haven't come across it in so many writings, films etc about that era, from those that lived through it.
It seems Nosaka, after his sister died, was later a street urchin put in a reformatory that slowly brought them "a slow death from want of food", but from which Nosaka again felt guilty when he was "rescued by his real father... who came across him by chance."
Imagine Setsuko, not 4 years old talking to her brother and others, but 16 months old always needing to be carried and no doubt at the end crying constantly as she starved to death. It's always the very young and old that get hit first as their bodies are weaker.
In this article by Cockerill, she writes that Nosaka declares that he continues writing his firsthand experience of the Kobe Air Raid in order to remind people that 'war is not a convulsion of nature but a man-made disaster'. Esoterically speaking, this seems the way of the 'dark side' or the empire-builders as they try to get people to follow along, think and behave like them, through fear, and forced choices, which in reality are not 'choices' at all, but acts of desperation. Slow torture that 'tames' society into submission as slaves. Time goes by but nothing ever changes, which is why it's called 'purgatory' with the goal 'wake up' and 'see the unseen' reality around us and make the choice to to leave this place behind, like Plato's Cave analogy. I hope Nosaka uses what time is left since his stroke in 2003 to work through this 'guilty conscience' of his that he drags around like an anchor embedded in his soul. You can't move on until you let it go, and 16 months may be about all the time left to heal the heart, as intellectual understanding is always easier than emotional understanding, which is needed to heal the wounds, so they can form scars and eventually disappear, no longer ghosts hovering around the memories that cannot be forgotten.
Needless to say, as a public figure, his pain is ours to learn from as well as his own, and pain is the gateway to real learning. This is put well in a slideshow of the anime at: www.slideshare.net/Bjuchelka/grave-of-the-fireflies-13175246
QUOTE 5. Unlike stories with happy endings, sad endings are usually more memorable, more meaningful, more captivating, more educational, and resonate with people for a longer period of time.
6. These reactions often encourage people to evaluate their dreams, needs, values, and morals in their own lives.
7. When people are sad, they try to alter these unpleasant feelings through understanding, self-analysis, and evaluation, often followed by changes in attitudes or actions.
8. On the other hand, when people are happy they are satisfied with themselves and do not want change, thus do much less self-analyzing.
It's interesting that so little of his writings have been translated after that short story which, like this Japanese journal, can mostly only be found in a few university libraries, and not accessed online unless you are a student etc..... but then the truth is always like that, hard to 'see' until one learns to adjust their way of looking at things... such as reality... and then all the symbols come to life.
Bi2wVs5CIc/[T-N]Cutie_Honey_the_Live_05%20[06D84689].avi 
