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| Mizuki served in the Japanese army during WWII |
The first part of the story introduces the troops arriving on the island and shows them preparing themselves and the surrounding area for war, vaguely reminiscent of the initial scenes in the film "Letters From Iwo Jima".
Mizuki's artistic style towards the environment is borderline photo-realistic, but he renders his characters in the more "cartooney" manga style. Perhaps this helps Mizuki distance himself from reliving or re-experiencing what had to be the gruesome realities that he and his friends/squad-mates faced during the war.
I don't think much of his work has been translated into English, as I've had a hard time finding anything other than the Kodansha GeGeGe-no-Kitaro volumes. From what I understand, Mizuki's WWII stories are considered his lesser-known works - his yokai (loosely: Japanese Folk/Fairy Tales) are what he is most well-known for.
Maybe Drawn + Quarterly decided to publish his WWII stories to test the American-graphic-novel-consumer waters, which I suppose makes sense, given the on-going American fascination with World War II, stemming from Saving Private Ryan, the Call of Duty games, Garth Ennis' various (all excellent) WWII comics, and the Band of Brothers/The Pacific HBO TV series, not to mention all the books and documentaries.
