Wataridori: Birds of Passage is a tribute to the Issei (first-generation Japanese Americans) and their collective history of World War II internment and their post-war pilgrimage to the Manzanar concentration camp. Miura, a fisherman, came to America by ship. Harukichi, a gardener, remembers the boys who taunted him as he bicycled from his job with a lawnmower tied to his back after World War II. Mrs. Sumi describes how Issei farmers developed the prosperous Imperial Valley farmlands despite the Alien Land Law.