Columbia and Princeton Opposed Honoring War Casualties of Axis

Other Ivy League colleges managed to duck the German chaplain controversy that occurred at Harvard last month. Only Columbia had a German alumnus who was killed fighting the Allies, and it followed Harvard's final policy by not honoring the soldier. In addition, Princeton adopted the same exclusion policy as the Harvard Corporation voted in 1944, but no situation came up at Princeton necessitating the use of its exclusion clause.

In a brief statement in December, Harvard reported that the inclusion on the War Memorial Plaque in Memorial Church of Adolf Sannwald, a Divinity student from 1924 to 1925, was a mistake and his name would be removed. Sannwald, a pastor of a church in Stuttgart, was drafted as a "common soldier" in June of 1942 and sent to Russia. At the time of his death a year later, however, he was serving as a chaplain.

The University has learned of two other enemy war casualties, but their names were not carved on the plaque. The men were Isoroku Yamamoto, special student from 1919 to 1920, who was commander-in-chief of the Japanese Navy at his death in May, 1943 and Dr. Shokichi Otajima, at the School of Public Health from 1932 to 1934, who was killed on Salpan in July, 1944.

At Columbia, its World War II dead were honored in a memorial service held in February, 1947. The only tangible record was the program compiled for the service. Although at least one Columbia alumnus was killed while in the German army, neither this man nor any other German was included in the program, according to the secretary of the university.

The names of Yale war dead are inscribed on marble plaques along the walls of Memorial Hall. The New Haven school "established no policy concerning Yale men who died but did not fight on the side of the Allies, since no such question arose."

The Dartmouth Alumni magazine encountered a problem in the early stages of World War II when it published in a single column the names of all alumni on both sides as they entered the services. Protests led to a division of the list.

Dartmouth memorialized its deceased alumni by Hopkins Scholarships, guaranteeing free tuition to the college for sons of these men. The records show none of these casualties to be from the Axis. K. however, a subsequent application for a Hopkins Scholarship by the son of a German casualty should appear, then the final decision would be made by the president or the board of trustees.