December 1941. Pearl Harbor has just been attacked, plunging the US into WW2. Alan is a brilliant but unassuming young psychiatrist who has been persuaded to join the Marines by his fiancée’s father, a retired general. His primary duty is to assist with recruiting by putting volunteers through various medical and psychological tests. The purpose of these is to sideline anyone likely to cause problems, such as alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, and mythomaniacs… but also homosexuals.
Things get complicated when Alan meets Merle, an extravert and rebellious young Marine, and—to his own amazement—falls in love with him. The two young men then begin a relationship that they must keep secret and, when Merle is sent to the Pacific, Alan decides to join him. Together, they must find ways to survive not only the Japanese onslaught but also the merciless homophobic purges of the US Navy…