Among the major effects of the Pearl Harbor bombing on campus life was the arrival of trainees from the V-12 Navy College Training Program. The trainees lived on campus and worked toward Rochester degrees. Clockwise from the top: President Alan Valentine (center), joined by George Berry, (left), associate professor of medicine, and John Rothwell Slater (right), professor of English, addresses uniformed Navy trainees from the balcony of Rush Rhees Library; Navy trainees practice drills in campus pool; Navy trainees run through an obstacle course near the college gymnasium, now the Goergen Athletic Center. (University photos \/ Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nMany students on the River Campus gave up their dorm rooms to Army aviation cadets undergoing training as well as dozens of men being trained as Naval photographic technicians.<\/p>\n
Buildings across campus were transformed into spaces for national defense work.<\/p>\n
The first of several city-wide \u201cblackouts\u201d\u2014protection from possible air attacks\u2014took place one week after the Pearl Harbor attack. At 6:15 p.m., superintendent of maintenance Charles Livingstone pulled the master switch to cut all power, plunging the River Campus into darkness. In the black sky, only the red winglights from the Gannett Newspapers plane could be seen. It carried city officials examining the blackout\u2019s effectiveness.<\/p>\n
The next day, all students were summoned to Morey Hall to fill out cards stating their draft status. US defense savings stamps went on sale in Todd Union\u2014for 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents and $1. They could be turned in for defense bonds, which started at $18.75.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will cost money to defeat Japan,\u201d read a notice in the\u00a0Campus<\/em>.<\/p>\nBefore Pearl Harbor, the campus community in large part mirrored the nation\u2019s isolationist views. \u201cYoung men have no burning desire to act as receivers for machine-gun fire,\u201d a\u00a0Campus<\/em>\u00a0editorial from April 21, 1939, declared. The writer, Robert Zwierschke \u201939, would be the first Rochester alumnus to lose his life in World War II, going down with the aircraft carrier\u00a0Lexington<\/em>\u00a0in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8, 1942. He would be one of 57 University alumni to die in the war. A memorial plaque in Wilson Commons lists each of their names.<\/p>\nRobert Zwierschke \u201939 was the first Rochester alumnus to die in the war and one of 57 by war’s end.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBlood drives were set up after the Army and Navy requested 200,000 donations. Carl Lauterbach \u201925, vocational counselor for men, was in charge of civilian defense at the University and assigned \u201cspotters\u201d to watch for enemy raids. On weekends, University students, professors, and staffers collected and sorted scrap. To aid one drive, Valentine used a sledgehammer to knock down an iron fence near the George Eastman mansion on East Avenue, which served as the president\u2019s official residence at that time.<\/p>\n
Rations for food and gasoline were enforced across the nation. Valentine began riding his bicycle to work, a three-mile trek from home, and many faculty members followed suit. When Valentine missed a train connection to address a school of nurses in Pennsylvania, he hitched a ride with a farmer and barely arrived at his destination on time.<\/p>\n
During winter recess, the senior faculty voted to compress four academic years into three, with a summer session set to begin May 15 and end August 7 (at $13.30 per credit hour).<\/p>\n
\u201cSummer vacation is war victim,\u201d read the headline in the December 1941-January 1942 issue of\u00a0Rochester Review<\/em>. So were the 1942 golf, tennis, and baseball 1942 seasons, which were canceled due to the accelerated timeline.<\/p>\nThe faculty also approved a plan requiring the men to take four years of physical education instead of two, with an emphasis on contact sports, boxing, wrestling, and obstacle courses. All students had to demonstrate an ability to swim and also float on the water\u2019s surface for one hour. Swim coach Roman (Speed) Speegle asked, \u201cHow many of our boys died at Pearl Harbor because they didn\u2019t know how to keep themselves afloat long enough for rescuers to reach them?\u201d He followed up by offering lessons to any young man in the Rochester area facing induction who didn\u2019t know how to swim.<\/p>\n
University secretary Anne Newhall had been on vacation in Hawaii and witnessed the Pearl Harbor assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe attack came as a complete surprise to everyone in Oahu,\u201d she recounted in a\u00a0Campus<\/em>\u00a0article. \u201cAt first, I thought it was only air raid practice, but after a few minutes, the planes grew much nearer and we started to hear anti-aircraft fire.\u201d<\/p>\nA fort next to the house where Newhall stayed was hit. She saved a piece of shrapnel and brought it to Rochester\u2014a powerful symbol of the war that had been brought home to America.<\/p>\n
\u2014Jim Mandelaro<\/em><\/p>\n\u2026with able support from the College for Women<\/strong><\/h2>\nStudents Judy Rebasz \u201945 (left) and Eunice Lisson \u201945 learn about motor care in an auto mechanics course. The College created \u201cwar minors\u201d that explicitly encouraged women to take courses in mechanics, mathematics, psychology, physics, engineering, accounting, and statistics. This photograph appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle<\/em> on Sunday, November 15, 1942 with the caption “Glamorous Grease Monkeys,” accompanying an article on the auto mechanics course, designed for war-related applications, but also for women to know how to care for their cars when men were away at war. (University photo \/ Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAs news of the attack reached the Prince Street campus, discussion turned quickly to ways in which the women could contribute to the war effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can we, young ladies of the war class of the URochester, assist in this great struggle?\u201d posed a student editorial in the January 1942\u00a0Tower Times<\/em>, the newspaper of the College for Women. \u201cCertainly not by expecting to live our own peaceful, normal lives. Times have changed and will continue to change. We must realize this and be ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\nThe students took some immediate steps, first turning the annual winter formal into a dance fundraiser for the Red Cross. They set up knitting drives, sold war stamps, and collected scrap metal. They intensified these efforts in subsequent months as men were called away for military service and industries expanded to meet war demands.<\/p>\n
In light of an amplified need for medical professionals, female students and alumni were urged to take the Nurses\u2019 Aid Course of the American Red Cross, offered at Strong Memorial Hospital. Course graduates were able to work alongside nurses and doctors, monitoring vital signs and assisting with dressings, casts, and slings.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome 20,000 more workers will be required to meet the demands of Rochester industries before the end of the year and at least 50 percent will have to be women,\u201d the College for Women’s newspaper, the\u00a0
Tower Times<\/em>, reported.<\/div>\nSimilarly, at the beginning of January 1942, the Women\u2019s Athletic Association hosted a 10-week course, Red Cross First Aid and Lifesaving, in Cutler Union, with instruction in accident prevention, breathing restoration, stoppage of bleeding, and bandaging of broken bones.<\/p>\n
The women formed a War Activities Board to highlight various campus initiatives and opportunities to assist the war effort, including calls to fill many factory supervisor and industrial lab technician jobs typically held by men.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 1942, Kenneth Ogden of the Kodak Hawk-Eye Works\u2014which was heavily involved in making optical products for the military\u2014headlined a luncheon on the Prince Street Campus to outline opportunities for women. \u201cSome 20,000 more workers will be required to meet the demands of Rochester industries before the end of the year and at least 50 percent will have to be women,\u201d according to a\u00a0Tower Times<\/em>\u00a0article reporting on the event. Women were encouraged to fill these roles while continuing to attend classes at the College.<\/p>\nThe College responded by offering \u201cwar minors\u201d that explicitly encouraged women to expand their liberal arts educations by taking courses in mechanics, mathematics, psychology, physics, engineering, accounting, and statistics. Women with war minors found jobs waiting for them upon graduation. Students who completed the war minor course in mapmaking, for instance, were \u201cguaranteed jobs as engineering aides in the mapmaking division of the War Department,\u201d boasted an article in the\u00a0Rochester Alumni-Alumnae Review<\/em>. Rochester was one of the few leading universities in the United States to offer these mapmaking courses.<\/p>\nAt the end of the war, in September 1945, the School of Medicine and Dentistry admitted 13 females, its largest ever class of women, and more than double the number of women in any previous entering class. George Packer Berry, assistant dean of the school, lauded the milestone: \u201cThey [women] have shown during the war that they can do as good a job as the men in many activities that formerly were considered exclusively the male province. As a result of their war endeavors, more women have become greatly interested in medicine and other fields of science, and the indications are that they are going to take an increasingly important part in them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Lindsey Valich<\/em><\/p>\nInstitute of Optics designed devices for night warfare<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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