Annapolis on the Charles Trained 60,000 As Harvard Shouldered Guns for 7th War

When Japan concluded the nervous diplomatic game of late 1941 by attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, the University quickly mobilized itself behind a nation that had suddenly been forced into a fight for life.

". . . Each one of us stands ready to do his part in insuring that a speedy and complete victory is ours. To this end I pledge all resources of Harvard University," President Conant told the assembled students on December 8.

Within a few months the many civilian students who departed for war were being replaced by personnel enrolled in newly established Army-Navy schools. With only two dissenting votes, the Faculty agreed to the president's suggestion to convert to a tri-semester basis in order to conform to the demands of the armed forces.

60,000 Men Trained

Despite their hasty inception, the 13 service schools processed some 60,000 officers, officer candidates, and enlisted men and sent trained technicians to every battlefront of World War II before demobilization.

Eighty labs, policed by solemn guards, were set up and were assigned contracts, usually allotted by the office of Scientific Research and Development, of which President Conant was a member.

University Tasks Are Varied

"Our war effort was not remarkable for the enormous size of any one job, but rather for the extraordinary diversity and number of the jobs undertaken," Sterling Dow '25, associate professor of History and War Archivist, recalled in an interview last week.

"There was a high degree of cooperation between American universities," he continued. "Each had a special assignment. Harvard scientists studied soil mechanics, blood fractionation, treatment of burns, underwater sound, electrical phenomena in the ionosphere, and countless other fields of military importance.

The largest single University laboratory was the Radio Research Lab, set up in March 1942 in a wing of the Biology Building. Directed by F. E. Terman, now Dean of the Engineering School at Stanford University, the lab turned out 150 devices, including aluminum foil "window," and "carpet," to confound enemy radar. Its developments were credited with saving 450 American bombers and 4,500 lives.

Fiber Eliminates Flight Noise

Soon after Pearl Harbor, the Electric-acoustic lab became the first war research group at the University. Work of Leo L. Beranec's staff centered around the carefully constructed "dead room," which reproduces the virtually soundless conditions of high altitudes and is considered the best sound chamber in the country.

With volunteer conscious objectors acting as guinea pigs, the electro-acoustic researchers developed a fiberglass sound-proofing for aircraft that climinated the nerve-shattering vibrations of flight.

The Psycho acoustic lab had been requested by the surgeon general's office to investigate the 14 hearing appliances then on the market. Unlooked for results of their research were revolutionary improvements in hearing aids for the deaf, by-products of urgent military research.

Over on the Boston side of the river, the Business School, competely converted into an Army-Navy establishment by June 1943, put its Fatigue Lab at the disposal of military authorities investigating the various climatic conditions under which fighting could take place.

During its four years of war work, the lab produced an electric suit that could keep an inactive man warm at 40 degrees below zero and discovered that vitamin requirements were the same under all temperature conditions.

Cohn Tests Plasma

The Medical School contributed to the prosecution of the war with the organization of a special hospital unit to control contagious diseases in England, since turned over to the British government.

Incalculable importance has been attached to Professor Edwin J. Cohn's research in plasma-fractionation processes as well as to the relief of the armed forces' medic shortage by 487 doctors graduated from the Medical School in ASTP or V-12 training programs.

The Service Schools

The other major aspect of the University's contribution to the war effort was more a superimposing of outside organizations upon an academic community than a utilization of existing facilities, but despite their transient military character, the service schools became an integral part of the University during their five-year stay.

Divided into military and naval commands, the schools were chiefly concerned with the training of officers for special duties; only two of them, ASTP and V-12, prepared enlisted men for commissions.

Commanded by Colonel Frank L. Purdon, the Army Training Schools included eight separate units. The Field Artillery and the short-lived Quartermaster ROTC's were discontinued during the war.

Over 6,600 clerics from every religion were indoctrinated in the Army way of doing things by the five-week Chaplain Training Course, largest of the Army schools. Its commandant, Chaplain (Colonel). William D. Cleary, heading the biggest group ever to attend the Divialty School stressed a policy of forceful inter-faith cooperation.

Busy School Works Overtime

Three Army schools were maintained at the Business School, graduating over 4,000 men trained in special disbursement problems. The Army Air Forces Statistical School alone graduated from its eight-week course 3,282 men prepared to coordinate use of personnel, aircraft, and equipment.

A special experiment in concentrated teaching, the Army Supply Officers Training School graduated 399 men from an intensive 13 week course that required 55 hours contact work with the faculty per week, in addition to field trips, seminar work, and lectures from visiting officers and industrialists. Innovations in pedagogical technique included the combined lecture in which several instructors shared the platform at the same time.

Devoted to undergraduate instruction, and to some extent integrated with regular college programs, the Army Special- lzed Training Unit was instituted at the College in June, 1943. Intensive language courses, instruction in personnel psychology, and medical courses were offered to the selected trainees. By 1944 the ASTP program had been drastically cut and the majority of its members reassigned to the infantry.

Spread throughout a god many of the buildings in the area beyond Memorial Hall, the Electronics Training Center from its inception in 1941 prepared officers in the fundamentals of radar. The four months course was perhaps the most technical of all the University service schools.

Means of readying runways for handling heavy ai planes were taught from 1942 to 1944 in Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Arthur Casagrande's School of Soils Control. Also set up was a Civil Affairs Specialists Training Program, conducted by Professor Carl J. Friedrich's School for Overseas Administration, under which men up to the grade of colonel were trained in military government procedures.

Navy Emphasized Communications

Naval Training Schools were headed by Captain C. H. J. Keppler, USN, and comprised five schools, stressing, as in World War 1, Basic Communications School. Twelve thousand graduates had left for duty afloat when all but the graduate elements of the school were decommissioned in 1945.

Largest of all University service schools, the Navy Supply Corps School sent over 7,700 officers, trained in supply and disbursing, to duty with almost every echelon of the far-flung war-time United States fleet. In included a branch of Waves stationed at Radcliffe.

Devised to produce qualified officers both from the fleet and civilian life, the V-12 and NROTC programs at one time numbered some 1,700 trainees quartered in two College houses. The V-12 has been virtually disbanded and the NROTC reduced to about 300 men