This is the story of the Japanese who immigrated to Hawaii around the turn of the present century, worked as forced laborers on the sugar plantations, and afterwards remained in Hawaii to work as free men and to raise families. It is the story also of their children, born and raised in Hawaii, and who, during World War II, won fame and glory for themselves and their country on the bloody battlefields of Italy and southern Europe.

But more than all of this, it is the story of the fate of the original immigrants during World War II. Rounded up by a panic-stricken American Government after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, these people were sent to the mainland to spend the war years being confined in one refugee camp after another, all while their sons were winning fame as American combat troops.

And finally, it is the story of these elderly people who, at the end of the war, became free men once again and were allowed to return to their beloved Hawaii to live out their lives in peace.