The Salon by NADA and The Community

Erika Kobayashi has been collecting stories of women during the war. In recent years, Kobayashi has focused on the stories of girls who made paper balloon bombs. Paper balloon bomb is a weapon in which a bomb is suspended from a balloon made of Japanese paper, approximately 10m in diameter. It was developed by the Japanese military during World War II. The painting Sky also links to this theme, based on a story told by one of the women who was making the paper balloon bombs that her younger brother picked up the falling bullet cartridges after each repeated air raid. The skyscape amid war is represented by a brass plate and the real empty cartridges collected in Okinawa where the U.S. military bases are still there.