Tosh is the voice of the rebel that authority seeks to silence; he is the proverbial "protruding nail" that Japanese tradition seeks to flatten. His fight is against not only his family's poverty and the environment that keeps them oppressed, but also his own plantation-boy mentality, "I'm a plantation boy, not a city slicker. I not scared of work", he brags at his first job away from the camp, all the while promising himself he will never die on the plantation like "the other dumb dodos". But Tosh quickly discovers there is no escape - despite the ever increasing distances he puts between himself and his family. His struggles are set against the cataclysmic events of World War II - the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the internment of Japanese Americans, the heroism of the 100th and 442nd in Europe, the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Asia - and the social and political upheavals in Hawaii - the unionization of the plantations, the rise of nisei political power and the Democratic Party, statehood.