A Boy at War

A Boy at War is set during the weeks surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Although the attack comes as a complete shock to the story’s protagonist, Adam, and to many others on the island, tensions had been growing between the United States and Japan throughout the 1930s. The US was extending its power in the Pacific, including Hawaii, as Japan took control of territory in China, a US ally. American and Japanese diplomats tried to negotiate for a better relationship without success. By November 1941, with the US blocking crucial exports to Japan, Japanese leaders gave the order to begin preparing for the Pearl Harbor attack. They hoped that by disabling the US fleet in Hawaii, they would have a clear path to take control of Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

A Japanese fleet assembled in the Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan, and then moved toward Hawaii. From these ships, about 360 planes would be launched for the attack. Shortly before 8:00am on December 7, the first plane appeared in the sky over Pearl Harbor. The Japanese bombed airfields at the same time they dropped bombs on the naval fleet, preventing the air force from mounting an effective defense. The attack was deliberately scheduled on a Sunday morning, when fewer naval personnel were aboard the ships. The first wave of the attack, lasting only about 30 minutes, decimated the US fleet. The USS Arizona exploded and sunk, and other battleships (USS West Virginia, USS Oklahoma, USS California, USS Utah) sustained enough damage to sink to the bottom of the harbor. In a second attack that began at about 8:50am, more battleships and smaller vessels were destroyed. When the US casualties were tallied, more than 2,300 Americans had been killed and another 1,100 wounded. The battleships Arizona and Oklahoma suffered the greatest loss of life.

In a speech to Congress the next day, President Franklin Roosevelt condemned the Japanese attack, calling December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” He asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Because Japan had signed a pact with Germany and Italy, these nations declared war on the United States a few days later, and Congress responded in kind. By December 11, the United States was fully engaged in World War II with enemies in both Asia and Europe.