San and Mayu are two schoolgirls living in Okinawa during the closing months of the Pacific War. Together with their classmates, the two friends are drafted into the war effort as nurses for wounded soldiers. When ordered to die for their country, the remaining members of the group escape only to face the harsh environment of a tropical paradise that has become a hellish battlefield.

In the freezing northern seas, the Yamato nuclear submarine begins its deep underwater voyage to the tune of Mozart, heading for the United Nations headquarters in New York. In the Bering Strait between the US and Russia, another submarine approaches: an American nuclear submarine that overwhelmingly dwarfs the Yamato. Now, a battle commences among the cracking floes of the cold Arctic Ocean.

The Battle of Peleliu was fought on the lovely Pacific island of that name by Japanese and American forces toward the end of the Pacific War. A work of fiction based on historical fact, this movie views the battle through the eyes of Tamaru, a 22-year-old soldier and aspiring cartoonist seeing his first combat. A chronicle of the “truth” as seen by a young man struggling to come to terms with war in an era when war was the norm.

Just 80 years ago, the peaceful sea was a battlefield. Soldiers continued to fight, dreaming of returning home, and their families continued to pray and wait for their safety. What stories were there in each of their lives, and what were they each thinking?

In the final days of the Pacific War, two Japanese soldiers, a senior officer and a local recruit, are cornered during the battle of Okinawa and hide in a banyan tree, only coming down for food. Unaware the war has ended, the two await reinforcements for two years. As they wait, they discover differences in rank, worldviews and motivation.

Nagasaki, 1945. Three nursing students, Tanaka Sumi, Ohno Atsuko, and Iwanaga Misao, return home when school is closed due to air raids, and spend some peaceful time with family and friends. However, at 11:02 AM on August 9th, the atomic bomb is dropped, and their daily lives are instantly shattered. The city is reduced to ruins, and despite their inexperience, the nursing students rush to provide medical care to the injured. Faced with the cruel reality that more lives must be buried than can be saved, the women continue to question the value and meaning of life.

On the Pacific front, towards the end of World War II, Japan's imperial armed forces launched 'kamikaze' attacks - suicide missions by aircraft laden with bombs. It was a mad operation with no hope of returning alive, but the nation went wild, and the attacks continued for ten months, literally until the very last day of the war. Close to 4,000 Japanese airmen died, and nearly 7,000 Allied military personnel were killed, and thousands more were injured by the attacks. How could this happen? Utilising 15 years' worth of extensive interviews with US and Japanese World War II veterans, Takayuki Oshima’s film delves into the mechanism of how a crazed madness swept through an entire nation.