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OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE DURING
WORLD WAR II
Occidental College, an independent,
coeducational college of liberal arts and sciences,
was founded in 1887 by a group of Presbyterian
ministers and laymen.
In 1910, it became a nonsectarian
institution. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, Occidental students and faculty under the leadership of its president, Remsen Bird, reacted immediately, and during the ensuing four years made significant contributions to the war effort. After the 1938 outbreak of the war in Europe, there were discussions on campus as to whether or not the United States should become involved. All vocal and editorial disagreements on the small campus of 800 men and women ceased with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
On Monday, December 8, the former campus
Defense Council was reorganized and met as the War
Council.
During that week Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt,
a houseguest of President and Mrs. Bird at their
campus home, spoke to the students on the War
Council as they anticipated the changes in the life
of the College that lay before them and discussed
how they could assist in the war effort. The
men students in the Enlisted Reserve Corps were
particularly anxious as to when they would be called
into active duty.
Curricular changes to meet wartime demands,
including modification for student acceleration,
went into effect.
Major adjustments were made when several key
professors took leaves of absence. For
example, three were called into government service. A physics
professor left for radar research at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a
philosophy professor departed for the Navy. Others
who remained at the College took on civic
assignments as in defense, on draft boards, or in
special civilian training programs.
A War Department Civilian Protection School
organized to train citizens for volunteer positions
was based on the campus, as was the Engineering,
Science, and Management War Training Program of the
Federal Government.
A significant contribution to war technology
was made when Occidental entered into a contract
with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the
production of rockets and associated parts using the
facilities of the Physics machine shop. Another
direct link to war technology came when the College
responded to the Federal Government to provide a
computation center on the campus for what was known
as the Muroc Project, a task force to determine the
flight path of a new super bomb planned for use in
Europe.
In July 1943, Occidental qualified for a Navy
V-12 unit on campus, resulting in four hundred Navy
and Marine men studying and training until departure
for final officer training. While
the V-12 presence required major housing, dining,
curricular, administrative, and social adjustments,
the program offset the enrollment decline which had
dropped to 365 civilian students. Despite
the many changes to accommodate the V-12 men, the
academic standards and liberal arts mission of
Occidental College were unchanged. The
V-12 men were welcomed into campus life by the
civilian men, women, faculty, and staff. A total of 1,303 former Occidental students served on the battlefronts of World War II, forty-one giving their lives for their country. |
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Jean Paule, College Archivist, January 18, 2005 |