This paper explores how Japanese painters depicted the reality of war after the defeat in World War II, focusing on Iri and Shun Maruki and Chimei Hamada. The Hiroshima Panels, which are giant ink paintings, made people aware of the devastation of the atomic bombing. They not only travelled around the whole country exhibiting their paintings, but they also conveyed the voices of the victims to visitors through the practice of "story telling" in front of them. Furthermore, from the mid-1950s, the Hiroshima Panels became a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement and exemplified a new form of art linked to social movements. Chimei Hamada, on the other hand, carved his war experience into small etchings. His work “Elegy for a New Conscript” series unique depicts both the suffering of first-year soldiers as victims of the army and the brutality of the Japanese military as the perpetrators of aggression. Painted five years after the defeat, "Elegy for a New Conscript" criticized Japanese society, which was about to embark on post-war recovery without sufficient reflections on the war, and Hamada's mission also was to record the truth as a war survivor. Both works can be seen as expressions of a strong critical spirit against Japanese society in the post-war recovery period, when it was trying to forget the war. These reminders of the war still cause us to confront the past issues that we have been ignoring for 75 years since the nation’s defeat.