Fearing for his men's morale after a beer boat is sunk off Funapee Atoll during World War II, M. Sgt. Dan O'Farrell persuades Army Capt. Elwood Prohaska to import a battalion of beautiful nurses from the United States. Lieut. Cmdr. Roger Snavely sends nurse Nellie Krause, hardly a soldier's vision of feminine charm. While searching for the missing beer, O'Farrell stumbles upon Calvin Coolidge Ishimura, an American Japanese drafted into the Japanese army and now AWOL. In their continued search for the beer supply, the two men launch an enemy torpedo boat, but instead they discover Maria, O'Farrell's pre-war fiancée, and Gaby, a mysterious beauty, unconscious on a wrecked sailboat. O'Farrell then organizes his crew, consisting of Navy Lieut. Lyman P. Jones, Ishimura, Nellie, Maria and Gaby, and continues his hunt, despite Snavely's order that they return. A Japanese fighter plane attacks, and Jones scores a direct hit. When the plane explodes underwater, thousands of beer cans spew up from the wreck and are quickly loaded aboard O'Farrell's boat. O'Farrell then captures an enemy submarine that has surfaced nearby, fooled by the PT boat's Imperial Navy markings. Days later, as O'Farrell paddles a raft toward Funapee beach, towing the submarine behind him, he hears his own memorial service being conducted. After loudly asserting that he is alive, he claims Maria for his bride.