At the Gila River concentration camp during World War II, a 17-year-old Japanese American musician named Kane Araki is known for his ability to perform lullabies for a nickel that put even the most difficult babies to sleep. Kane is known as a heart-throb among the women of the camp; his presence in the barracks of families arouses the suspicion of men, who spread horrible rumors about Kane as a womanizer and sometimes even physically harass him. A prominent figure in the camp, Reverend Jun Miyoshi, organizes the men in the camp to form a collective aimed at producing lullabies that would counter Kane's influence in the camps. Under the reverend's influence, Kane's visits decrease and disorder runs amuck in the families. Kane then replaces the reverend's position as the leader of the collective, and gives workshops instructing how to write simple lullabies. Kane tells them the secret to his lullabies is their simplicity: the tunes are so simple, they can be carried into dreams. To write simple songs, Kane advises the men to walk around a baseball diamond, and hum to themselves until they become bored. The men take Kane's advice, and the lullabies they create prove to be too potent. One man's lullaby puts a baby to sleep for 3 days. Other men's lullabies give their babies strange symptoms, like deepening their babies' voices, or causing memory loss in the fathers. These developments cause the men to turn against Kane. The reverend becomes Kane's fiercest critic. Kane holds a free workshop for the fathers whose lullabies have the most adverse reactions. At the workshop, Kane sings a lullaby which puts over a hundred fathers to sleep. While they sleep, Kane and the women in the camp smash and burn the guitars and ukuleles in the camp. Kane tells the women that the lullaby cast a spell on the men to never speak until the end of the war, unless only to repeat the words of their wives, daughters, and mothers. As the reverend's daughter grows up out of infancy, the reverend learns to repeat her baby words and cherishes them as a language until they fade in memory.