Joan and her mother look for Danny amidst the 400 graduates of Henry Hudson High in the Bronx in 1944. Normally the graduating class has twice that number of students. Danny is not yet seventeen; he still has a year and two months before he can be drafted. Danny does not understand why he must start college at all if he will likely be drafted in the middle of it. He tells his mother and sister that if he goes to war in the middle of college, he will not go back to college. As the graduates file in, Joan sees a boy that she thinks is Danny but loses sight of him. The ceremony begins with all the usual pomp and circumstance: the valedictorian gives a speech, the awards are handed out, they all sing the Star-Spangled Banner. The only difference between this year and any other year is the fact that thirty-one seats have been left open for the fallen. Joan cannot help but think how bizarre it is that the ceremony is so normal in a year so different. The class presents a plaque to the principal in honor of the thirty-one Henry Hudson men who have died in the war. They announce the thousands of dollars the school has raised since Pearl Harbor. The principal thinks about the fact that, like every other year, he will forget the faces and names of the graduates, whose faces and names he never truly knew. At the end of the ceremony, the boys go to pick up their diplomas. Danny's mother spots him and calls out to him. Across the world, boys Danny's age are fighting and dying in war.