Adapted from two short stories by James Michener, South Pacific chronicles two love affairs. The first involves Lt. Joe Cable and a young Polynesian girl. The second revolves around Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse from Little Rock, and Emile de Becque, a French planter with whom she falls in love one enchanted evening. Rodgers and Hammerstein tied the two stories together by having Cable and de Becque go on a dangerous mission behind Japanes lines from which only one of them returns.