Radcliffe and the War

While bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Helen Crossley '42 was singing.

Little did she know that after her Radcliffe Choral Society concert at Brown University, she would return to a college shocked by the news that war had finally reached American soil.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, disrupted the peaceful atmosphere of the Radcliffe Quad. The war which only yesterday had seemed so far away now became an immediate and threatening crisis.

"Pearl Harbor was a surprise," Crossley says. "We weren't quite as close then to the wars as we are now."

The day after the bombing, Radcliffe President Ada L. Comstock addressed the college's entire student body, emphasizing the key role Radcliffe would play in the war and encouraging students to support their country's cause.

"[You] should stay in college until summoned," said Comstock. "Only those with training and experience are needed immediately, and the longer the war lasts, the greater will be the value of the knowledge, imagination and trained skill [you] shall acquire here."

A Double Challenge

For the seniors--the first class to graduate during World War II--the war proved both a challenge to finish the year successfully and an opportunity to explore exciting new careers.

"We were seniors, so the best thing we could do was to finish," says one member of the Radcliffe Class of '42. But, she adds, "We were all doing all that we could to help."

Once sparked, the desire to participate in the war effort spread throughout the classes. Mealtime conversations turned to debate on war-time strategy and politics.

"Our lives changed," says Crossley. "Before the war ... most people didn't think there was anything worth fighting about."

"It changed overnight," she continues. "There was a job to be done and there was far more support because it was a direct attack."

Training for War

The new-found energy translated into a series of war-aid efforts and training sessions to prepare Radcliffe women for the responsibilities of war.

In response to a request from the director of U.S. naval operations, Radcliffe launched a course on cryptanalysis, the study and practice of decoding and sending war-time information.

Taught by the late Harvard professor Donald H. Menzel, the course was kept secret and offered only to a limited number of seniors and graduate students who met the necessary criteria.

"Bright, close-mouthed, native students are needed, and evidence of a flair for languages and mathematics would be advantageous," said the naval communications director in a letter to President Comstock, adding that "any intense, sociological quirks would, of course, be undesirable."

Students enrolled in the course were instructed not to utter the words "cryptanalysis," "intelligence" or "security" outside the classroom under any circumstances. They were also warned not to leak any information to the media.

During May 1942, both Harvard and Radcliffe offered fire-fighting courses supervised by the Cambridge Fire Department and instituted drills for entering and escaping shelter areas.

But despite the precautions, most graduates say they do not remember visibly increased campus security or concerns about bomb threats and air raids.

To complement the training sessions, representatives from Washington government agencies came to Cambridge to recruit Radcliffe students for jobs in the civilian sectors of the war effort.

"The offices of War Information and War Production all needed people," says one Radcliffe graduate. "It was the first time women had gone in such masses into that kind of work, because the men were fighting."

"There was a great rush to get into the services ... an urgency," recalls Cynthia Sortwell Castleman '42. "Everyone was pulling together."

At the time, women were expected to enter traditionally female-dominated professions, and Radcliffe career advisers were often reluctant to guide their young students toward work outside these spheres.

"The [Radcliffe] academic advisers would not help us unless we said we were going to become secretaries or teachers," said Crossley. "But because of the war, many girls were in and out of government."

Opening New Doors

And many Radcliffe graduates say the war opened jobs and future careers to women that would have been closed if they had been forced to compete with men for the positions.

"We were still at a very traditional time," says one member of the Class of '42. "The war had a very profound effect on the number of jobs for women."

Crossley, who worked in Washington for the Office of War Information, asserts that "The objective of life then [for women] was to raise children. But some of us went into war works and had different lives."

Wearing the Pants

Alba Ferry '42, a pioneer in the war effort, worked as an air raid warden in Cambridge.

"It was kind of fun. They wanted to see if the women could replace the men and, of course, we did."

During the spring of 1942, Radcliffe received more calls from the Red Cross, the Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) and the Women's Army Corps (WAC) to recruit women then ever before, according to the Radcliffe Officer's report for 1941-42.

In the graduating class, 165 women worked in first aid fields right after graduating and 29 found employment in motor mechanics--compared to a scanty 11 entering Cambridge child care.

And the need for Radcliffe graduates with scientific training quadrupled in one year, according to the report.

Mary V. Acheron '42 began working in a New York chemical warfare plant the September after her graduation. After three years she was promoted to supervisor and guideline writer.

"They were hiring women to replace men and I had enough chemistry to qualify," says Ahern. "It was one of the most incredibly interesting assignments of the war."

According to Ahern, the secrecy leading up to the drop of the American A-bomb shrouded the entire country.

"As of August 1, 1945, we had gotten all the cancellations of everything dealing with chemical weapons. And August 6 was the bomb," Ahern says. "So it was very well-planned, although nobody knew about it.

Judith E. Friedburg '42 also found herself in a traditionally male-dominated field after graduating from Radcliffe. Friedburg worked for two years in the American embassy in London, where she performed such duties as bomb damage assessment in the English countryside.

After returning to the United States on the carrier ship "Liberty," her experience abroad helped her land a job as a writer for Time magazine--a position which was then normally only available to men, she says.

While Friedburg admits she feels very lucky to have won the post, she points out that "there were many opportunities because there were many jobs to be filled." Friedburg later went on to become one of the founders of Travel and Leisure magazine.

The increased availability of jobs, coupled with active recruitment policies, enhanced the student body's awareness of the events of the war, Friedburg says.

And Friedburg, who headed the America First organization while at Radcliffe and was a leading political activist on campus, says there was definitely a pro-war feeling on campus that had not previously existed.

"Pearl Harbor was a shock. Now Britain's fight was our fight," says Friedburg. "We wrote letters to newspapers, talked to groups and to senators, and we brought students to Harvard from Czechoslovakia."

Faculty Involvement

In the spring of 1942, Radcliffe invited many public figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Joseph Kennedy, to speak about the war.

"Joe Kennedy was very big on the Harvard campus, and he supported help to Russia," Castleman says. "And he was so damn good-looking."

Professors also became more vocal as the war progressed. As the number of enlisted Harvard men increased and class sizes dwindled, Radcliffe women took more and more classes at Harvard--a trend that would eventually lead to the official abolition of separate lectures for men and women.

In an address to the college in February 1942, a Radcliffe dean spoke of opportunities for graduate work and the importance such work would have in the war.

"In the war effort, college work is important. Oxford and Cambridge are still functioning in warstricken England," the dean said. "There is a great connection between graduate study and our way of life. Such study won't help us in winning the war, but it will help in reconstruction."

With the war such a constant topic of discussion on campus, it soon became difficult to avoid taking sides in the ongoing debates.

A Radcliffe News student poll taken in the spring of '42 showed that nine of every 10 students favored retaliation for the Japanese bombing of defenseless Manila with an American counter-bombing of Japanese cities.

War propaganda was unavoidable, even in the college newspapers. Camel cigarette advertisements advocating women's participation in the war appeared almost daily in The News.

"What, a girl is training men to fly for Uncle Sam?" teases the ad. "Don't let those eyes and that smile fool you. When this young lady starts talking airplanes, brother, you'd listen too."