In making the first Japanese film to address the A-bombings, Hideo Oba was forced to omit many crucial scenes in Kaneto Shindo's script when the U.S. Occupation government rejected the first two synopses. The result is an intriguing, somewhat sentimental melodrama about a Nagasaki radiologist whose early work with X-rays had already exposed him to a fatal dose of radiation before the bomb dropped on August 9, 1945. Based on an essay by Dr. Takashi Nagai, the film follows the scientist's conversion to Catholicism amidst the turmoil of the “fifteen-year war.” Nagai's duty to his wife and children is tempered by his dedication to medical research. The destruction of Nagasaki occurs in the final third of the film; Oba, as required by civil censors, portrays the spirited survivors as they bravely go about rebuilding the city. When the eponymous bell finally peals, it is a hopeful sound, but one cannot disregard an undertone of alarm.