A Boy at War opens in November of 1941, as Adam Pelko is dropped off to register for his first day of high school. Adam, his parents, and his younger sister, Bea, are new arrivals to the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Adam’s father, a naval lieutenant, has been stationed at Pearl Harbor. He is assigned to the USS Arizona, a super-dreadnaught battleship docked at Ford Island. When Adam introduces himself to his class, he struggles to answer the teacher’s question of where he is from. Roosevelt High is Adam’s first civilian school. He attempts to explain that he is military, moving regularly throughout his life with his father’s assignments, and therefore not truly from anywhere. When his teacher presses him to identify his hometown, Adam names Adams Center, New York, where his grandfather lives, but the teacher challenges him, assuming he is being obstinate. Asked to show where it is located on the classroom map, Adam points it out, near Lake Ontario. Adam is relieved when another student, Davi, volunteers to answer the teacher’s question about the number of Great Lakes and their names. Adam takes note of Davi’s appearance, wondering whether Davi might be Japanese, Chinese, or Indigenous Hawaiian.