Violinist Maddie elopes with Lane Moritomo, the ambitious son of Japanese immigrants, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed, Lane is seen as the enemy and she must sacrifice her Juilliard ambitions when he is interned at a war relocation camp.

The students in Mrs. Jenkins' class explore the careers they'd like to have when they grow up, including Yoko who wants to be a Japanese teacher.

San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries-memories...

Yoko pretends she cannot read because she thinks that if her mother finds out she can, no one will read her a bedtime story.

Seventeen-year-old CJ enjoys working at her family's flower shop and is upset when she learns that her mother has plans to sell the shop.

When Yoko gets lost in the airport, she uses her sign-reading skills to find her way back to her mama.

Just when twelve-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers.

A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather's journey to America which he later also undertakes, and the feelings of being torn by a love for two different countries.

Twelve-year-old Ben Uchida keeps a journal of his experiences as a prisoner in a Japanese internment camp in Mirror Lake, California, during World War II.

When the Imperial Household Council refuses to approve the marriage of her parents, eighteen-year-old Izumi decides to become the perfect princess to help win the council's consent, but will she sacrifice her own heart in order to secure her parents' happiness?