Theodore Taylor's book The Cay is set on the small Caribbean island of Curacao during World War II in February of 1942.

*World Atlas

Willemstad, Curacao is where Phillip and his family live. Willemstad has a rich history and is inhabited by many different cultures.

*World Atlas

The Original Inhabitants: The Arawak Amerindians

*Originalpeople.org

The first Europeans to see the island were a Spanish expedition in 1499.

*National Geographic Society

The Spaniards exported the indigenous people to other colonies where workers were needed. The Arawak Amerindians were wiped out by Spanish diseases such as smallpox and measles.

The island was occupied by the Dutch in 1634.

*Curacao Maritime Museum

Willemstad became a perfect spot for trade...but in 1662 the Dutch West India Company also made Curacao a center for slave trade. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1863.

*Curacao Ports Authority

Oil was discovered in 1914. The Royal Dutch Shell and the Dutch government built an oil refinery on the former site of the slave-trade market in Asiento.

In 1942, Curacao was an island where the Native West Indian people were considered inferior by the Dutch settlers. Phillip's mother was from Virginia, where slavery had been over for almost 80 years, but there was still a lot of distrust and dislike between white and black people.

Also in 1942, during the setting of the story. The world was in the middle of World War II. This was fought between the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan and the Allied powers of Great Britain, France, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union.

The Caribbean Islands produced and supplied aviation fuel for the Americans and the British. As the story begins, German submarines have already bombed an oil refinery on Aruba, an island nearby.

*en.wikipedia.org