The film begins in 1943 at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, with newly commissioned Lieutenant Michael Grayson (Johnson) reporting for duty with the 442nd, then in training. He discovers that he has been sent to a unit composed of Nisei, when he had expected to return to the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, a Texas United States National Guard unit with which he had served as an enlisted man. Having joined the war to fight against the Japanese, he is disturbed to find he is expected to fight alongside people whom he sees as Japanese, rather than Americans. From the outset, Grayson runs his platoon with rather harsh treatment of his subordinates, including an almost martinet-like insistence upon the strict observance of Uniform Code of Military Justice. He (and the audience) learn that “w:go for broke” is a pidgin phrase (used in Hawaii) meaning to gamble everything, to “shoot the works” – to risk “going broke” or bankruptcy.