Make love, not war

An American woman is sitting at a desk folding paper cranes (some already attached to strings) in a small, simple, American hotel room with trees (with leaves) visible outside the window.

At the statue of Sadako Sasaki (in Seattle), the same woman begins to drape the completed strings of paper cranes on the statue. Tears drip on the ground below...

Her voice speaks: “If you had lived, what would I give you? I would give you... this…”

Now in a Japanese apartment bedroom with both Japanese and American paraphernalia on the walls. A fictional adult version of Sadako is seen happily kissing the same woman from before.

Time is broken in this flashback (and somewhat in the entire film). The ensuing lovemaking is in bits and pieces, some too fast, some too slow, some discolored, some damaged, some cropped, some tilted, some extreme closeups, some from too far away... as if retrieved from the ruins of a destroyed city...

As Sadako orgasms, her cries ring out not just as cries of bliss, but an essential expression of humanity and of life...

Then, as her orgasm begins to subside, they look happily into each other's eyes...

Suddenly, there starts what sounds like neverending thunder... or an earthquake... or what is it? Soon after, the camera itself begins to shake violently and eventually slides off the surface it was on, falling onto the ground. The screen fades to white during the fall. There is the sound of windows shattering... and the sound of the atomic bomb fades away into distant memory.

Against absolute silence, the woman's voice speaks once again, this time choked with tears: “If only you had lived… oh, why did you have to die?”

Back at the statue, the ground is stained with tears. All the thousand paper cranes have been draped around the statue now.

The woman slowly walks away, then looks back over her shoulder, expressionless.

Fade to black. Text on the screen: “make love, not war”