On April 1, 1945 with the battle of Okinawa beginning, fourteen-year-old native Okinawan Hideki, drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps, is handed a grenade and told to go kill American soldiers. Ray, a young American Marine, has just landed in Okinawa and doesn't know what to expect from his first battle. When the two of them collide in the middle of the fighting, the choices they make in that single instant will change everything.

Set during WWII and told in alternating voices, Nellie, a young Oregonian and survivor of a balloon bomb sent over by the Japanese, strives to understand how the war has torn her community apart and created prejudice against Japanese-Americans, while across the ocean, as part of her nationalist duty, Tamiko helps create the balloon bombs, but in her struggle to survive hunger and starvation, Tamiko muddles her way through her anger against the United...