It’s 1945 when we meet Daisy Uyeda, newly returned to the bright lights of San Francisco after 3 years incarcerated in a desert camps in Utah. Daisy’s family life is joyful, centered around their ramshackle Victorian home. But the shadows of US incarceration policies that saw Japantown’s residents forced onto buses in 1942 still linger.

While Daisy was incarcerated, other migrants were arriving. We meet Marguerite Johnson (later Maya Angelou), one of thousands of new Black San Franciscans working in the Navy's shipyards, as jazz clubs spring up in the “Harlem of the West”.

Many observers fear  the return of Japanese Americans to this changed neighborhood will spark race riots. Instead the two communities find common ground - including in Daisy’s family’s café. But this peace proves short-lived. The City declares the district blighted, and bulldozers arrive to force a second displacement on the residents of Nihonmachi.