Nanami Ishikawa works as an editor at a publishing company. She travels Hiroshima to go after her father Asahi who left home. During her visit to Hiroshima, she learns about the tragic story of Asahi's older sister Minami Hirano. When Minami Hirano was 13 years old, she was exposed to radiation by an atomic bomb.
O filme conta a história de Suzu, uma garota de 18 anos que se muda para Kure, uma cidade militar próxima de Hiroshima. Como conta a história, Hiroshima é aniquilada no dia 6 de agosto de 1945. Sede de uma importante base da marinha, Kure experimenta seus próprios demônios: de bombardeios incendiários a voleios de artilharia. Além de experimentar diversas situações conflitantes ao seu redor, Suzu deve se tornar forte o suficiente para viver longe de sua família e conviver com a família de seu noivo.
Thirteen years afterward, I wonder if those who bombed Hiroshima are looking at me and saying: 'We did it! We were able to kill another person!' They should be," murmurs Minami (played by Kumiko Aso), one of the two leading female characters in Yunagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni, as she lies dying in 1958, her life brought to a premature end by sickness resulting from her exposure to atomic bomb radiation. This is a story about those who at least initially survived the first U.S. atomic bombing of 1945 and their descendants in contemporary times. The film, based on a comic by Fumiyo Kono, jumps between the two time frames and quietly depicts the sorrow and mortification experienced through the everyday lives of laid-back and soft-spoken Hiroshima people. Only a few scenes of the bombing and the ensuing devastation are featured.
