The radio orchestra under Shostakovich endures and puts on the Seventh Symphony during the siege. The massive US industrial effort fuels the war against the Axis powers. Japanese citizens try to prepare, but are unable to cope with the US onslaught. Despite horrific incendiary attacks, Japan persists in the war effort until the US drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. The war ends, having cost 55 million lives, the majority of which were civilians.
Refugees try to find their way home, often only to find their cities burned and leveled.