The mother of the family at the heart of the book sees an evacuation order posted around town when she goes out to complete her errands. The order (though it is not explicitly stated in the text) requires Japanese Americans to pack up their homes and report to a central location. As an emergency wartime measure, the United States government has decided to detain all Japanese Americans, ostensibly for their own safety, to protect them against discriminatory violence from prejudiced neighbors, but actually for the purpose of controlling any persons potentially involved in Japanese sabotage operations, or other forms of wartime spying.

The woman’s husband was arrested a few months prior to Evacuation Order No. 19, and the woman does not resist the mandate to pack up and go to the detention centers. She aborts her initial plan for the day and goes to a store where she buys some supplies for packing up her home instead of the grocery items she initially set out to purchase. She considers purchasing a shovel, without explaining for the reader what she intends to do with a shovel.

That afternoon, she packs up the entire house, feeds her dog, then kills him with a shovel from her shed, burying him in the back yard with the same shovel.