In The Taste of Kona Coffee, two nisei brothers, Aki and Tosh, fight to free themselves from the prison of old-world traditions and poverty only to find themselves bound by the constraints of neocolonialism. In Manoa Valley, set some thirty years later, Tosh, now a successful building contractor in Honolulu, must reconcile his image of the future with that of his son, Spencer, who dreams of life in mainland America. The third play, The Life of the Land, is set in 1980. Spencer has achieved his goals but at the cost of alienating himself from his family and his culture.
Hawaii No Ka Oi presents an important aspect of Japanese American social history in Hawaii, yet it reflects the immigrant experience of other ethnic groups. These are plays with which Americans of all backgrounds can identify.
