In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction
A young intellectual conscientious objector is forced to serve with the Japanese army in Manchuria. He joins with a dim-witted former gangster in an effort to desert by stealing a train.
A treasury official passed over for promotion and obsessed with careerism interferes in the lives of his three sons, who seek escape from his relentless pressure in the mortal danger of mountain climbing.
