The book takes the form of a war-time diary being kept by a young Japanese college student who has been inducted into the Imperial Navy at the height of World War II. He is trained as a combat pilot, but as the tide of the war turns against Japan, he is transferred to one of the new "special attack" or "kamikaze" units. The novel explores the personal histories of the kamikaze-a group of soldiers often misunderstood and mischaracterized in the West.