Historical novel set in the last days of World War II in the Pacific involving a passionate love story between an American Navy officer and a Japanese college professor in Kyoto. Richard Cobb Jackson is serving on a destroyer when atomic bombs obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After landing a job on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the American occupation of Japan, Richard meets and falls in love with Emiko Murakami. The more time Richard spends in the devastated country, where millions have been killed, and millions more are homeless and facing starvation, his view of the war shifts from one of total support to soul-searching questions about the U.S. firebombing of Japanese cities and the use of atomic bombs. Journeying through the wasteland that was once a proud and intact Japan, he struggles to understand the racial hatred on both sides, and the fanaticism which drove Japanese troops to fight to the bitter end. Emiko and Kyoto become his refuge from the horror of the war. She introduces him to the beauty and tranquility of the only city not bombed by the Americans, with its temples and shrines, history and culture. Richard faces a difficult choice of whether to marry and take Emiko back to his hometown in the South, where he is certain she will encounter intense anti-Japanese sentiment and inherent racial prejudice.