Nine years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American and Japanese-American residents of a small Pacific Northwest town get along reasonably well. That is, until a murder trial resurrects racism, suspicions and memories of the past. When a local fisherman, Carl Heine (ERIC THAL), is found dead, several bits of evidence and allegations point to Kazuo Miyamoto (RICK YUNE), an American born young man of Japanese descent, as the suspect.
As prosecutor Alvin Hooks (JAMES REBHORN) and defense attorney Nels Gudmundsson (MAX VON SYDOW) make their respective cases before Judge Fielding (JAMES CROMWELL) and the local jury,
Ishmael Chambers (ETHAN HAWKE), a one-armed reporter and war veteran becomes interested in the case. Not only is the trial intriguing to him due to the journalistic blood he inherited from his publisher father, Arthur (SAM SHEPARD), but the defendant's wife, Hatsue (YOUKI KUDOH), was at one time his secret childhood friend and then teen lover.
With various witnesses, such as sheriff Art Moran (RICHARD JENKINS), Carl's widow Susan Marie Heine (ARIJA BAREIKIS), and his mother Etta (CELIA WESTON) called to the stand, their testimony brings up revealing facts about the case, the defendant and the way Japanese Americans were treated during the war.
It also resurrects a plethora of memories and flashbacks for Ishmael as he remembers the times when he and Hatsue (REEVE CARNEY & ANNE SUZUKI) would spend friendly and intimate time together in the hollowed out base of an old cedar tree. Of course the war came along and interrupted everything, with him heading off into service when she and her family were sent off to internment camps.
As those varying memories - including the time when Hatsue called off their secret romance -- pervade his consciousness, Ishmael must decide what to do with a vital piece of evidence that could affect the outcome of the trial and his chances of ever getting his former lover back.