A young mainland soldier forced to live at the abandoned Japanese air base encounters the ghost of an American pilot who refuses to depart until he can thank the one person who showed him kindness while he was a prisoner of war. The final diary entry of a Japanese pilot records the simple pleasures of tasting local foods while stationed at Huwei. In the post-war period of martial law, a drowning incident in a pool formed from an old bomb crater reveals the reasons a mute boy refuses to speak. Many years and many disappointments later, a couple that originally fled to Taiwan in the panic of wartime finally learns to see the Huwei settlement as home.