A man ahead of his time, Japanese's college professor Masao Takashimaya of Kyoto had a passion for modern ideas that was as strong as his wife's belief in ancient traditions. His eighteen-year-old daughter Hiroko, torn between her mother's traditions and her father's wishes, boarded the SS Nagoya Maru to come to California for an education and to make her father proud. Although Hiroko didn't want to go, she felt like she had to. Her father was certain that once she was there she would love it, and she did. It was August 1941. From the ship, she went to the Palo Alto home of her uncle, Takeo, and his family. To Hiroko, California was a different world. Her cousins had become more American then Japanese. And much to Hiroko's surprise, Peter Jenkins, her uncle's assistant at Stanford, become an unexpected link between her old world and her...