A young boy grows up in Japan, where his Canadian missionary father is stationed along with two other men, an American named Samuel Blane and a British man named Ffoulkes. In an otherwise monotonous, neglected childhood, the missionaries’ visits are moments of excitement for the boy. He remembers with vivid detail Samuel Blane’s stories of growing up in America, their chess games, and his son Tom’s visits. One time, when the boy learned how to make his own boat out of wood, he and the other missionaries went to the nearby river to test it. Ffoulkes encourages the boy to float the boat on its own and they can redirect it with stones, but one of his stones hits the boat and sinks it. The boy tries not to let anyone see that he’s upset, but a few days later Samuel Blane sends him a beautiful replica of a schooner. After that, he doesn’t see much more of the missionary, but as he grows up and goes to school he appreciates the man’s attentiveness and democratic outlook on life. He sees him once more at a yearly baseball game between the missionaries and the secular community, where Samuel Blane jokingly taunts a bishop who switched sides in order for the missionaries to win the game. Now, on the morning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the boy thinks of Samuel Blane. Meanwhile Samuel sits alone in an apartment in Japan holding a letter from his son in the U.S. air-force, warning him to leave the country even though it’s too late.