New Guinea, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, became an essential source of rubber for Japan's war effort. Forcing more and more production of rubber from the Dutch plantation owners and their native workers, the Japanese created an environment of fear, reprisals, and death. Both native workers and white families fled to the hills to fight the Japanese with machete's, knives, and their bare hands. It wasn't until, Jokuri, the young son of the Volstead plantation's native overseer, rebelled, and joined the guerrillas in the mountains that the rebels became a fighting force that the Japanese had trouble containing. Love blossoms and racial taboos threaten as the Dutch and natives fight the Japanese and try to survive in this lonely outpost of war in the jungles of the South Pacific.