As a school assignment, all the students at Silverlake Elementary are building boats, but Sophie worries that they will not be able to use the boats when there is no rain to fill the pond.

Over a year after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the arrest of Tomi's father and grandfather, Tomi and his friends, battling anti-Japanese-American sentiment in Hawaii, try to find a way to salvage his father's sunken fishing boat. 1943, one year after the end of Under the Blood-Red Sun, Tomi's Papa and Grandpa are still under arrest, and the paradise of Hawaii now lives in fear-waiting for another attack, while trying to recover from Pearl Harbor....