Lieutenant Wallace W. "Sparky" Watts, a young man from an affluent family in Milwaukee, joins the Navy after graduating from Princeton University. Hoping to have a "meaningful life experience," he is thrilled to be stationed overseas, as he hopes to escape the country club lifestyle in which he was raised. Upon his arrival, he meets Sachiko, a young Japanese woman working as a waitress in the Officers' Club, and begins a passionate romance. When Sparky meets Captain Anderson's wife Julia, however, he comes face to face with the culture he was trying to escape. Sparky, determined to break away from his parents' all-American values, confesses to her that he is "trying to get away from all that." Julia learns of Sparky's romance and feels it's her duty to "bring him back into the fold." Julia places obstacles between Sparky and Sachiko, which actually deepen Sparky's commitment to follow through. While he is falling in love with this young Japanese woman, he finds that it is not so easy to escape the allure of American culture.

Describing Sparky's journey, Gurney says, "At the beginning, it's all about experiencing new things. And at the end, it's about coming home and the pull of home -- the inevitability of that pull."

Captain Anderson, like Sparky, was once involved with a woman from the Far East. He confesses to his young friend that their stop in Manila wasn't strictly business, but that he had hoped to see his former girlfriend.

However, when his son Teddy is killed over Korea, he gravitates towards what he knows. His marriage to Julia comes on the heels of Teddy's death, as he believes that marrying Julia will help him to get over the pain of his loss. On one hand, he is nostalgic for his former Philippino girlfriend and the simplicity of his life before the death of his son, yet he tells Sparky that when things get tough, "we gravitate towards our own kind."

The captain shows a fatherly interest in Sparky and takes him on an excursion to Saigon where he encourages him to become a Navy flier. The Captain is, ironically, in many ways a pacifist in love with the Navy. He tells Sparky, "There are a lot of guys sitting around Washington who took the right courses and went to the right schools, and learned about what they call the domino theory, and now they like to play games around the world." While the complexity of the problems in Vietnam are becoming apparent, he could never anticipate that impending disaster America will face in Vietnam.

Julia came to the Far East as a career woman, working for an American radio program called the Voice of America. She was not looking for a husband, but chose that path after being passed over for a promotion.

However, longing for something neither a career nor life as a Navy wife can give her, she finds herself attracted to Sparky. Julia remembers the simplicity of her days as a young woman. She says to Sparky, "You make me remember those boys, in their fresh uniforms, whom I used to meet after work at PJ Clark's in New York, and whom I also kissed, kissed goodnight, before they went off to war." It's as if the feeling Julia is nostalgic for no longer exists in this post-war world. She warns him about his involvement with a Japanese woman and challenges him to think about the realities of life in America with a foreign wife. Of the racism in the early 50s, Gurney says, "There's something sort of daring about what Sparky is doing at this time; we're not that long after World War II, a time when everything was wrong about the Japanese." Julia tries to add American culture to the naval base, while Sparky tries as hard as he can to carve out a life for himself that excludes memories from home. The two end up in a heated discussion about issues of race and class that culminates in Julia's decision to write Sparky's family about the increasing seriousness of his love affair. Gurney tells part of this story against the backdrop of a dance lesson that Julia arranged. The Americans clumsily attempt to capture the feel of home, yet at the same time, the wide gulf between Sparky and Sachiko, present but only in the background, is painfully clear. Gurney explains that, "Even in the early 50s the Japanese were perceived as evil, degenerate, cruel, and treacherous. So for him to be involved with a Japanese woman was shocking to his family in Milwaukee."

Sparky's roommate, Bob, a young man from Enid, Oklahoma, is caught in another kind of prejudice. Having joined the Navy because his father thought it would toughen him up, Bob finds himself drawn to the culture of this new and exotic land. But his experience turns sour when he is blackmailed by a Japanese man with whom he has been sexually involved and is forced to give up top secret documents. Bob's sexual identity is revealed to the Captain and even Sparky is unable to understand his friend, who had led him to believe he had a steady girlfriend back home. In the end, however, having lived a life of covering up his true feelings, Bob confesses that he is tired of lying about who he is. "The subplot of the gay man allowed me to talk about different kinds of attraction and illicit love," says Gurney. "I hope we learn about the blinders that we put on when we have a racist attitude."