There is no traditional plot in this novel; no characters, with specific identities and individual storylines. Instead, all of the women in the book come together to tell their stories as a group. Each seems to be experiencing the same things, and each speaks for the other.
The Japanese Picture Brides arrive in America by boat. They are headed to California, to marry men they have never met. They are the original "mail-order brides". Many of the husbands are nothing like the person they had described to their new brides; much like the short, fat, and bald men on an online dating service, the men sell themselves to their brides as tall, imposing and good-looking. The truth is startlingly different in most cases. The consummation of these marriages is awkward and difficult; their first night together is effectively sex between strangers who are supposed to feel something for each other, but just don't.
Japanese women do not have an easy time fitting in. Their American neighbors are sometimes friendly but the Japanese do not understand their new culture and are not educated well enough to take anything other than menial work. Many become migrant laborers, trading in the houses they believed they would live in for rural and run-down shacks with their co-workers. Some are more fortunate; they obtain work as live-in help in the nicer areas of the city. A select few start their businesses, and they are almost single-handedly responsible for creating a Japanese-run area of the city fondly nicknamed "J-Town".
The women believe that when they have children, their children will have a far easier time in life than they did. After all, they are first-generation Americans. Things will be different for them! Of course, they could not be more wrong. Their Asian American children experience a great deal of prejudice. Their fellow students in high school want nothing to do with them, and when they come to apply for work, they find that they are discriminated against for their oriental ancestry in that forum too. As well as this, they are rejected by the Japanese community for not being "fully Japanese". Their lives are just as hard as the lives of their mothers, just in a different way.
Once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in World War Two, Americans were understandably frightened of their Japanese neighbors. They don't know who to trust, and consequently, the Japanese are considered traitors. They are randomly arrested and questioned; some are interned. Japanese families moved on together, leaving their homes, jobs, and schools because of the Japanese government's aggression on Hawaii.
The final chapter of the book then tells the tale of this movement of the Japanese from the perspective of the white Americans they had considered neighbors until recently. They miss their Japanese friends at first. Their absence is noticed; but gradually, as time goes by, people forget about them, and when they do not return, nobody gives it a second thought.
