After the war, the independently wealthy Shimizu combined his two abiding interests by founding a home for war orphans as well as a film production studio. The former provided both actors and subject matter for Children of the Beehive. Shot entirely on location, it tells of a war veteran who meets up with a gang of vagrant children (eight orphan boys and a repatriate girl). The unlikely group makes its way through the devastated landscape of postwar Japan, heading for Hiroshima. This setting and Shimizu's effective use of the wonderful amateur actors lend the film its gritty realism. But the film does not lack in virtuoso set pieces based, as always, on the action at hand.