A Boy at War

Adam Pelko is the protagonist of A Boy at War, a young man of 14 who at the start of the novel has recently moved to the island of Oahu with his mother, father, and younger sister, Bea. Adam’s father joined the navy before Adam was born, and Adam has spent his entire life on military bases, immersed in military culture. His concept of home is America in its entirety; he has no sentimental ties to any particular part of the country and sees the military community, service members, and their dependents alike as his extended family. Adam is used to attending school on base, wherever his father happens to be stationed.

When he arrives in Oahu, Adam attends public school with civilian students for the first time. Prior to his enrollment at Roosevelt High, Adam’s friends have always been selected from among his peers whose parents were also officers. Adam has always adhered to the rigid expectation that he must not socialize with other adolescents whose parents are of a lower rank. In choosing to go fishing with his friend Davi, and to continue visiting Davi after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adam engages in his first conscious defiance of his father’s demands. Adam holds his father in high esteem, though a hint of resentment occasionally emerges when Adam is reminded of his father’s accomplishments and prowess.

Adam strives to please his father and conform to the strict military regulations his father adopts in their family home, and he experiences anxiety and a heightened sense of self-consciousness whenever he knows that he will be subjected to his father’s scrutiny or disapproval. Adam is under strain and pressure to live up to his father’s expectations, and though he effectively meets most of the demands placed on him, he receives a disproportionate amount of criticism from his father and less affirmation and praise than he earns. Adam is expected to behave as an extension of his father and in all his actions to assume the weight of the navy’s reputation on his shoulders.

Adam is kind and patient with his younger sister, Bea, devoting time to playing and socializing with her despite the difference in their ages. He is protective of his mother, who upholds the rules of the house but takes a more relaxed approach than his father does. Adam strikes up a friendship with Davi, a boy from his class who was born in Hawaii but who is of Japanese descent, and whose parents are Japanese citizens. Adam is cognizant of their ethnic differences, and he comes to truly care for Davi despite the doubts his father attempts to place in his mind about Davi’s allegiances. He is ashamed and wracked with guilt when he attacks Davi and uses a racial slur against him in the confusion of the attack on the harbor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, in which Adam becomes thoroughly enveloped, constitutes a day of significant trauma for him. The visceral experience of the terror and carnage is compounded by the loss of his father. Adam does not see his father die, but he does witness the moments that eventually result in his death. Adam struggles with the notion of leaving his father behind, entombed in the USS Arizona, when the Pelko family is forced to go back to the mainland.