California

The story is set in California, as the women and their husbands have immigrated there from Japan. During the first years in California, the women and men live as migrant workers, traveling between farms in order to have consistent work. The women give birth to children, and the children work on the farms as well. Eventually, the families move to more urban areas, implicitly in an attempt to acquire more familial and economic stability.

The Farms

The story describes the many hardships that the families must face while living as migrant workers on farms in California. The work is painful and arduous, and not even the children are exempt from working in the fields. The families live in poverty, and the children long for better lives. Life on the farms is also fairly dangerously, as a relatively high number of children die due to illnesses, accidents, disappearances, and...