Hospitalized with the dreaded atom bomb disease, leukemia, a child in Hiroshima races against time to fold one thousand paper cranes to verify the legend that by doing so a sick person will become healthy. Sadako Sasaki was only twelve years old when she died. She was two when an atom bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan where she lived with her family. Ten years later, she died of leukemia as a result of the bomb. Today Sadako is a...

Twelve-year-old Hanako and her family, reeling from their confinement in an internment camp, renounce their American citizenship to move to Hiroshima, a city devastated by the atomic bomb dropped by Americans.

Keiji Nakazawa draws on his own experiences as a young boy in Japan to recount the struggles of Gen Nakaoka as he tries to rebuild his life, reconnect with his friends, and cope with the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Gen Nakaoka, a middle school student in Hiroshima in 1950, is influenced by a progressive-minded teacher and a brilliant but cynical classmate as he struggles against the negative forces taking over Japanese society in the wake of World War II.