The day of the bomb was a day which was to change the lives of all mankind, not just Sadako. Sadako is a little girl who lives with he parents and elder brother in wartime Hiroshima. She is a thin little girl because she doesn't get enough to eat, but she has a chubby face because she is still very young. On August 6th, 1945, Sadako and her brother go to join the queue for food outside the Ministry. But Sadako is too weak to wait for their ration and her brother decides to carry her home. On the way he stops to bathe while Sadako sleeps on the lakeside. Just as he dives into the lake the atom-bomb explodes over the town. Sadako and her family survive the dropping of the bomb and the subsequent rigours of life in a post-war world - the black market, the shortages, the bitter competition. The pleasures and the tragedy of life in Japan at this time are seen here through the eyes of the young girl who wins local fame for her prowess in a bicycle relay race, only to find that even she cannot cycle fast to escape the events of the past. Her story - and through it the story of mankind - is told with the vivid detail of a colour film and the sensitivity of a human documentary. It is an account without bitterness and without horror of an event that changed the course of history.