A six-year-old girl learns what patriotism means right up until the moment it costs everything. The film watches her understand loss in real time, without ever stopping being a child, and that gap between her innocence and what's actually happening is where the devastation lives. By the end, you're not watching a war story, you're watching what war takes from someone who had no say in any of it.

Kayoko begins first grade in 1940, a girl known to everyone around her as something of a crybaby. She loves playing with friends, singing schoolyard chants and spending time with her three older brothers. Her mother is expecting, and Kayoko looks forward to becoming a big sister without entirely understanding what that role involves. As the war effort intensifies, she joins in the patriotic spirit and gives up her favorite doll so its materials can go toward making explosives. The years pass, and Kayoko watches the war change her own life and the lives of the people near her, until 1945 brings grim times. This drama film draws on the real wartime childhood of original creator Kayoko Ebina.