Torn between two cultures and two worlds, the Nisei felt like wandering nomads with no ties to their homeland. For these "war orphans," America was a blank or "clean white" sheet of paper where anything was possible, but for Mas Arai, he couldn't escape the painful memories of World War II. Arai harbors a dark and disturbing secret about what happened before his flight from Hiroshima, a secret he had planed to take to his grave. But when a mysterious stranger appears looking for a man by the name of Joji Haneda, Arai knows he can no longer bury the past. Swept up in a shadowy underworld of gambling fixes, hush money, and even murder, Arai's quest to discover the truth behind what happened more than fifty years ago will uncover a multitude of mysteries, each more deadly than the last.

Naomi Hirahara is a freelance writer and journalist and former editor at The Rafu Shimpo. The daughter of a Los Angeles gardener and atom bomb survivor, Hirahara has authored the National Museum's American Profile Series.