Caught in the cataclysm of World War II, three Japanese American brothers find their lives turned upside down. After Pearl Harbor is bombed, eldest brother, Akira Omura, is trapped in Japan. In America, middle brother Tad and the youngest, Danny, and their family are sent to war relocation camps at Santa Anita Racetrack in Southern California and Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Akira falls in love with a Japanese woman Emiko. Complicating matters is a love triangle between Akira, his beautiful fiancée, Emiko, and another suitor, Hiroshi.
In America, Tad, Danny and the Omura family face extreme prejudice and are vilified as enemy aliens. Tad believes the only future for Japanese Americans is to be loyal to America, and he volunteers as a medic in the U.S. Army's 442nd Regiment. Danny is extremely indignant that the US government has thrown the family into the camps and becomes a draft resister.

The Omuras traverse oceans and the even wider chasms of prejudice, war, and separation from loved ones, risking their lives to seek freedom and hope for the future.