During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Preston Hobbs.

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, colleges on the West Coast became a military asset for two reasons. First, they could potentially provide the government with valuable talent and innovations to help win the war. Second, colleges were deemed vulnerable to Japanese attack and so had to prepare to defend themselves. A war mentality had already been developing on campuses^[1], and the attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in a wave of paranoia and patriotism that swept the colleges as much as the rest of the country. Oregon State College began to prepare for an attack, in conjunction with the city of Corvallis, by preparing air-raid sirens, fire-proofing buildings, and creating local defense units, among other things. Although this anticipated Japanese attack on universities never happened, the Japanese made several efforts to bomb the American West Coast and most of these attacks took place in Oregon. While Oregon State College administrators determined how to prepare for an attack, students shared their thoughts about the war.

Students made their feelings known about the attack in the student press. Written by and for students of OSC about the happenings around campus and the world, the Oregon State Barometer provides us with a valuable look at a student-centered perspective on how ordinary life collided with the new reality of war. The attack on Pearl Harbor happened in the middle of the school year, right before winter break. And so, it allows us to see both the road to war and the aftermath of the attacks from the perspective of OSC students. We can see how quickly students started to think more broadly about the war and what it meant for their way of life. In an article titled “Changing Ideas.” The author states: “It is difficult to see how the United States can continue to allow her citizens these luxuries, and still turn her maximum productive power to war.”^[2] Opinion pieces like this by students offer us a window, to see how the psychology on campus changes from peace to wartime and the common issues they faced because of this worldwide event.

The first article after the attack on Pearl Harbor attack was published on Tuesday, December 9th, and it opened with the message of FDR’s famous speech following the attack. At the very top in big bold letters is the word Blackouts, informing all readers that the Benton County Chairman of Civil Defense, Donald Hout, stated blackouts would continue (they had been in effect since December 7th) until further notice. The blackouts were to take place between the hours of 11pm and 7am, According to the blackout order, “Civilians must stay indoors during the blackout hours. Students in living groups must keep light from shining to the street during these hours. All vehicles, except police and emergency cars, must be kept off the streets and highways.” Lights could act as a guiding beacon for enemy bombers to their targets, and so light had to be kept to an absolute minimum during dark hours. These blackouts applied to the whole West Coast and lasted many weeks after the initial attack.^[3]

OSC, in cooperation with the city of Corvallis, put several air-raid sirens around the campus and city, as we can see in a Barometer article referring to a tryout run of the new system on January 7th, 1942.^[4] On campus, at least two air raid sirens were installed by administration on the Physical Plant as well as the Agriculture Hall, both located near administration buildings and the library. However, all buildings on campus were modified or updated by the college administration to prepare for war conditions. The college received gas masks from the federal government and put them in all students’ wardrobes.^[5] Fire exits, and fire-fighting equipment were made readily available and were updated. OSC was most worried about the potential fires caused by bombing, and so fire drills became regular and making buildings fireproof and or easy to escape was prioritized. The roofs of both the Armory and the Heating Plant were painted camouflage to make them less visible to aircraft. New phone lines were also set up to ensure communication between major buildings like the Physical Plant, Library, Administration and Armory would still be possible during an air raid, and for the first time OSC considered creating a 24-hour telephone service.^[6] Buildings in the city of Corvallis also received renovation and air raid sirens, but the local city government also organized a home guard of about 70 men to protect the city in the case of a Japanese invasion.^[7]

OSC’s administrators also participated in preparation for a possible bombing in the local area, especially Oregon’s forests. As part of a wider national effort, OSC created its own group of dedicated firefighters for its own protection and sought to recruit and educate future firefighters to protect the rest of the state and country. That’s because this was part of a wider national effort to create Army Engineers dedicated to protecting the vast forests of America. The army started researching the idea in June 1941 and by that same time the following year, the first forestry units were activated by the Army Engineers.^[8] In the Pacific Northwest this was especially true as not only were the forests plentiful, but they were considered incredibly valuable “to guard one of the most precious resources of the nation… the northwest’s valuable tracts of timber, from which more than half of the nation’s softwood lumber is obtained.”^[9] The lumber of the Pacific Northwest was vital to many wartime industries, and a local staple. OSC wanted to ensure it had a role in the defense of Oregon’s primary resource, as well as its main vulnerability. This project was not just for the purpose of the war but also for ordinary wildfires, so its true goal was long term.

As it turned out, the fear that the US government had about the Japanese using the American forests to cause damage was quite well-founded, even if the Japanese did not have the full capabilities to pull it off on an effective scale. Oregon was the only state on the US mainland the Japanese bombed directly, and it happened on four different occasions. The first occurred June 21, 1942, when a Japanese submarine launched a torpedo towards Fort Stevens near Astoria.  This resulted in nothing more than a crater on the beach, but it put America and Oregon on higher alert. The next attack came on September 9, 1942, when Japanese veteran pilot Nabou Fujita launched his plane via catapult from a submarine off the coast of Brookings in Southern Oregon. His goal was to drop a firebomb in the middle of the forest and ignite a large forest fire that would engulf Brookings and beyond. He tried the same thing twenty days later near Port Orford. Both missions were complete failures, as the bombs were either duds or failed to cause a big enough fire in the damp forests.^[10] The last effort, and the only one to produce fatalities, happened on May 5, 1945, near Gearhart Mountain. The Japanese had unleashed hundreds to even thousands of balloon bombs from their mainland across the Pacific Ocean, intended to land in the US and set fire to the American Forest. However, few ever reach the American Coast, and only the one that landed in Oregon resulted in any casualties.^[11]

Oregon State College worked hand in hand with local and federal governments to secure the OSC campus and to support the national war effort. At home, school administrators put the campus on a war footing by renovating the campus and preparing students. On the national level, the college participated in efforts to train new units for defending the nation and its vital resources. For more information on the subject the SCARC Archive, and specifically the Barometer articles, are a great source of information on the history of OSC from the student side.

Works Cited

Biennial Report of the President for 1941-1942, 1942, Oregon State University Special

Collections and Archives Research Center, Annual and Biennial Reports (RG 013 – SG 12) Box-Folder 6.03: 16-19.

“Blackouts,” Oregon State Barometer. December 9, 1941.

Derek Hoff, “Igniting Memory: Commemoration of the 1942 Japanese Bombing of Southern

Oregon, 1962-1998.” The Public Historian 21, no. 2 (1999).

“Changing Ideas,” Oregon State Barometer. December 11, 1941.

“Forest Defense,” Oregon State Barometer. February 28, 1942.

“Gas Mask Attire of Student Soon,” Oregon State Barometer. January 24, 1942.

Larry Tanglen. “Terror: Floated over Montana: Japanese World War II Balloon Bombs,

1944-1945,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 52, no. 4 (2002).

“New Air Raid Signal Tryout Set for Today,” Oregon State Barometer. January 7, 1942.

“Steps Taken to Secure Home Guard for City,” Oregon State Barometer. February 24, 1942.

Troy Morgan, “Wood for Warfare: American Forestry Soldiers in Action,” Army History, no. 48

(1999).

Cardozier, V. R. Colleges and Universities in World War II. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1993.

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^[1] Cardozier, V. R. Colleges and Universities in World War II. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1993. 170.

^[2] “Changing Ideas,” Oregon State Barometer, December 11, 1941.

^[3] “Blackouts,” Oregon State Barometer, December 9, 1941.

^[4] “New Air Raid Signal Tryout Set for Today,” Oregon State Barometer, January 7, 1942.

^[5] “Gas Mask Attire of Student Soon,” Oregon State Barometer, January 24, 1942.

^[6] Biennial Report of the President for 1941-1942, 1942, Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Annual and Biennial Reports RG 013 – SG 12, Box-Folder 6.03: 16-19

^[7] “Steps Taken to Secure Home Guard for City,” Oregon State Barometer February 24, 1942.

^[8] Troy Morgan, “Wood for Warfare: American Forestry Soldiers in Action,” Army History, no. 48 (1999): 10.

^[9] “Forest Defense,” Oregon State Barometer, February 28, 1942.

^[10] Derek Hoff, “Igniting Memory: Commemoration of the 1942 Japanese Bombing of Southern Oregon, 1962-1998,” The Public Historian 21, no. 2 (1999): 65–66.

^[11] Larry Tanglen. “Terror: Floated over Montana: Japanese World War II Balloon Bombs, 1944-1945,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 52, no. 4 (2002): 79.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Cecily R. Evonuk.

During World War II in the United States, women’s increasing autonomy in the labor force stirred up heightened gender expectations and anxieties. The year before the war, the number of women in higher education was at an all-time high, followed by a decline during the years of the war as women entered the war effort.^[1] Worries about youth and society becoming morally corrupt intensified during wartime, and this was only antagonized by demographic shifts in the numbers of women in higher education and the labor force. Through archival material such as photographs, scrapbooks, and newspapers at Oregon State University’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC), we can chart the rise of these anxieties at Oregon State University during the years of World War II.^[2]

The Delta Zeta Sorority-Chi chapter scrapbook, which includes sorority-related materials ranging from 1919 to 1949, provides invaluable insight into the lives of women at Oregon State University prior to and during the years of World War II. The scrapbook primarily includes information on past and current members, letters, and photographs. The vast majority of the material in the scrapbook is from OSC alumni responding to invitations to anniversary events for the organization over the years. What is especially compelling is that, though the scrapbook consists of accounts from approximately 70 women, nearly all of the material discusses several common themes: gender, labor, military or military-related service, and most prominently, family. The majority of the photos in the collection consist of photos these women sent of themselves and their families to be included in the scrapbook, and these alumni described and focused on the idealistic parts of their lives in their photo descriptions and accompanying letters.

Photos of OSC Alumn Dorothy Bailey Knapp with her husband Mac in uniform, 1943. Knapp provided the captions for the images in the scrapbook. Interestingly, Knapp emphasizes how her husband, Mac, is her “whole family,” this is especially important to note within the context that most of the women who had sent photographs for the scrapbook included pictures of their husbands and children, and Knapp does not. Betty Hanson with her husband in uniform, 1944. During the years of the war, bragging about their husband’s participation in the war effort was a common theme throughout the scrapbook. OSC alumni and sisters Hazel and Katherine Saremal submitted pictures of themselves posing in their Women’s Army Corps (WAC) uniforms to the scrapbook. Many women in the WAC were eager to show off their patriotism and participation in the war effort through the scrapbook.

Most of the materials these women provided for the scrapbook conform to a carefully curated image of morality and war effort idealism, however, some material suggests that these women were asserting their sexual freedom. Barbara Ness, a member of the WAC and one of the women in the scrapbook who deviated from these expectations of women in the war joked about being “out of uniform” and “naughty” in a captioned photograph. 

Barbara Ness, an OSC alum’s photos with cheeky captions in the Delta Zeta Sorority-Chi chapter scrapbook.

World War II had profound impacts on the anxieties and policing of vice and sexuality in American society. Opposing vice and promoting morality became synonymous with ideal citizenship and aiding the war effort. Women often joined and participated in clubs and organizations such as the YWCA and the Red Cross that promoted “moral” ways of living and hostessing. The YWCA, the Red Cross, and other club organizations helped to maintain the patriarchal nurturing and caretaking expectations of women while utilizing them as a tool to assist in the war effort through acting as hostesses.^[3]

The WAC also imposed gendered expectations on women. Women serving in the military was perceived as a masculine concept that would open up opportunities for sexual and gender deviance, so organizations such as the WAC were encouraged to promote femininity and enforce gender and sexual expectations.^[4]

These ideas surrounding vice and sexuality seeped into both the social and academic sectors of OSC. The pressures to conform to the archetype of the ideal woman in the war effort significantly impacted women at OSC. These attitudes are reflected in the Delta Zeta Sorority Chi Chapter Scrapbook through written correspondence and photographs. This pressure to conform to a womanhood of morality and respectability to aid the war effort created intense anxieties surrounding vice and venereal disease during the war.

In the sorority scrapbook, we see these women conforming to this respectability with the exception of a scant few such as Barbara Ness who intentionally used vague language when implicating otherwise. The establishment of stringent gender norms during wartime, fueled by anxieties caused by changing conditions, firmly entrenched the idea in society that venereal disease was one of the products of moral corruption. Because of wartime campaigns that had linkages between sexuality, morality, respectability, and patriotism, almost all the women in the scrapbook conform to a carefully constructed image of wartime respectability.^[5] We can see how this gendered rhetoric and social pressures, reflected in the scrapbook, influenced societal perceptions of vice and venereal disease at OSC.

“Picture Will Show Disease Affects” Oregon State Barometer, January 14, 1944: p 1. Cartoon in the Oregon State Barometer, and spread in the paper dedicated specifically to female students that highlighted gendered expectations. “Postwar Oregon State” and “Woman’s World” Oregon State Barometer, June 9, 1944: 2-3. Post-prohibition anxieties as seen in the article “Return of Beer See as Health Detriment” in the Oregon State Barometer, April 1, 1933: 1.

Anxieties surrounding vice and venereal disease at OSC during World War II are clearly seen in the language of the school’s newspaper, the Oregon State Barometer. Through the Oregon State Barometer, we see the rise in anxieties surrounding student health and venereal disease at OSC in the years leading up to the war.

When the war began, these anxieties intensified. During the years of the war, there were many mentions of concerns surrounding venereal disease, morality, and respectability in the paper.

With soldiers nearby at Camp Adair, and with the recent dismantling of the prohibition in 1933, fear surrounding the spread of vice permeated OSC.

“Camp Dance is to be May 23,” Camp Adair Sentry, May 14, 1942: 1. “Co-eds Teach Adair How to Square Dance,” Oregon State Barometer, November 27, 1943, 1.

Students and soldiers also organized dances as a part of fundraising for the war effort. These dances, though viewed as important to the war effort, frequently bred anxiety about inappropriate fraternization between soldiers and female students. These anxieties are reflected in the subtle language used in the local newspapers during the war. One article in the Camp Adair Sentry details the importance of maintaining a “well-supervised” dance at the MU Ballroom.

During the years before the war, the OSC student health center had been criticized for its lack of emphasis on social hygiene by Dr. Beattie as discussed in the Oregon State Barometer. This indicates the presence of concerns surrounding venereal disease and social hygiene at OSC. OSC’s Dean Langton responds to the criticism by highlighting the required hygiene courses for all freshmen, and the frequency of these courses. 

“Dean Langton Criticizes Article by Dr. Beattie,” Oregon State Barometer, November 3, 1931, 1, 3. OSC Dean responded to Dr. Beattie’s article stating that “here hygiene is a required subject,” and highlighting how there is “regular hygiene instruction” at OSC. “Oregon State Monthly, December 1931.”

The health center also had “women’s days” one of which was dedicated to breast examinations on January 20th, 1949. The gendered nature of these “women’s days” raises the question of what possible ways the student health center could have targeted female and male students differently. Did the student health center ever explicitly have programs for students who had contracted venereal disease? Were any potential anti-venereal disease campaigns by the student health center gendered? It can be difficult to discern from the written record the scope of institutional action regarding subjects such as venereal disease, which could be considered a contentious and controversial topic for the time that people were hesitant to openly publicly address in the written record. 

The crusade against venereal disease began before World War I. Its roots came from the anti-vice campaigns that began in the early 20th century and were defined by the prohibition from 1920 to 1933. However, the end of the prohibition was not the end of strong anti-vice sentiments. World War I marked a new chapter for anti-vice movements. Wartime created more opportunities for women to participate in labor, contributing to more interactions between young men and women. A spike in venereal disease for young soldiers that threatened the war effort called American institutions to action. Authorities began policing vice and incarcerating individuals who had contracted or were suspected of having contracted venereal disease. These campaigns to prevent vice and venereal disease disproportionately impacted and targeted women, more specifically, poor women of color. Men were rarely the ones held accountable for the spread of venereal disease. World War II provided a continuation of this anti-vice and venereal disease campaign.^[6]

Women continued to assert their independence, autonomy, and sexuality through labor in the war effort.^[7] Wartime often manifested these campaigns due to the gendered nature of American patriotism. It was women’s duty to remain the pure and moral guiding force for men.

These attitudes towards gender, vice, and venereal disease during World War II are reflected in the subtle language used in the various materials such as photos, letters, and newspaper articles in Oregon State University’s SCARC. By learning about how these gendered pressures affected women during the war, we can complicate our understanding of what the war effort looked like and its implications on race, class, and gender during World War II.  

Bibliography

 “Camp Dance is to be May 23,” Camp Adair Sentry, May 14, 1942: 1.

“Co-eds Teach Adair How to Square Dance,” Oregon State Barometer, November 27, 1943: 1.

“Dean Langton Criticises Article by Dr. Beattie” Oregon State Barometer, November 3, 1931: 1, 3. 

 Delta Zeta Sorority Chi Chapter Scrapbook (MSS DeltaZeta), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

 Dorn, Charles. “‘War Conditions Made it Impossible…’: Historical Statistics and Women’s Higher Education Enrollments, 1940-1952.” Studies in the Humanities 36, no. 2 (2009).

Historical Publications of Oregon State University, Oregon State University. “Oregon State Monthly, December 1931” Oregon Digital: 13. Accessed 2023-12-14. https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71bq42r.

“Meet Your Enemy” Venereal Disease Booklet, Federal Security Agency, 1944. Folder 14, Box 35, Defense Council Records, Oregon State Archives https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Documents/life-vice1.pdf.

Meyer, Leisa. “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II,” Feminist Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 593–596, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178084.

Oregon Daily Emerald, March 05, 1948: 8.

Oregon State Barometer, June 9, 1944: 2-3.

 “Picture Will Show Disease Affects” Oregon State Barometer, January 14, 1944: 1.

 Kimberley Reilly, “‘A Perilous Venture for Democracy’: Soldiers, Sexual Purity, and American Citizenship in the First World War.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13, no. 2 (2014): 225.

 “Return of Beer See as Health Detriment” Oregon State Barometer, April 1, 1933: 1.

 Strom, Claire. “Controlling Venereal Disease in Orlando during World War II,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 91, no. 1 (2012): 88-93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23264824.

“Student Health Center X-Rays 411 Women” Oregon State Barometer, January 20, 1949: 1.

 Meghan Winchell, “‘To Make the Boys Feel at Home’: USO Senior Hostesses and Gendered Citizenship.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 25, no. 1 (2004): 190–211. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347266.

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^[1] Charles Dorn, “‘War Conditions Made it Impossible…’: Historical Statistics and Women’s Higher Education Enrollments, 1940-1952,” Studies in the Humanities 36, no. 2 (2009) 1.

^[2] Oregon State University was known as Oregon State College or OSC during the years of World War II

^[3] Meghan Winchell, “‘To Make the Boys Feel at Home’: USO Senior Hostesses and Gendered Citizenship,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 25, no. 1 (2004): 190. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347266.

^[4] Leisa Meyer, “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II,” Feminist Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 581–587. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178084.

^[5] Kimberley Reilly, “‘A Perilous Venture for Democracy’: Soldiers, Sexual Purity, and American Citizenship in the First World War,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13, no. 2 (2014): 225.

^[6]  Claire Strom, “Controlling Venereal Disease in Orlando during World War II,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 91, no. 1 (2012): 88-89, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23264824.

^[7] Leisa Meyer, “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II,” Feminist Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 593–596, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178084.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Quinn Wright.

William Robbins wrote an extensive, chronological study of Oregon State University (known as Oregon State College (OSC) prior to the 1960s). In his study, he dedicated a full chapter to OSC during the Second World War. In this chapter, he covered Camp Adair, a military base located at the intersection of Highway 99 and a railroad line, on flat, open land about eight miles north of Corvallis. Robbins states that Camp Adair held several prisoners of war from 1944 to 1946, and then states that “not many locals knew about these prisoners.”^[1] But why not? It was no secret that the US was holding POWs; the United States Army even advertised it in Camp Adair’s official newspaper, the Camp Adair Sentry.^[2] The article “203 POW Camps,”, initially published in Washington D.C. and republished in the Camp Adair Sentry,[3] implies the number of prisoners the armed forces had captured, particularly in Europe, was a point of pride for the American people. The high number of POWs captured suggested that to the American people that America was winning the war. However, because these prisoners were perceived as enemies, they likely weren’t openly welcome in populated areas. However, if that were the case, why choose Camp Adair, a site so close to civilians? Additionally, the site was not built to be a prison. A likely reason for the secrecy was that those prisoners should not have been there and were only placed in Camp Adair out of necessity.

The first piece of evidence that Camp Adair wasn’t an ideal camp to hold POWs is its location. Camp Adair, or Adair Village as it is known today, is surrounded by forest vegetation and farmland.^[4] This was even more true in the 1940s than it is now. In fact, OSU’s College of Forestry is using the forests to test old-growth management techniques because they are so old.^[5] This is all to say that Camp Adair would not be the best place to hold prisoners who might try to escape into the obscuring forest, or into a local civilian neighborhood. While POW Willi Gross states that gates, fences and guards were present at Camp Adair, they spent ample time working in and around farmland protected only by guards.^[6] Escaped POWs were known to happen from time to time in both Allied and Axis camps.^[7]

The second piece of substantial evidence is the extensive use of POW labor on local farmland to help with harvesting and planting. First-hand accounts from POWs talk about this farm work. Willi Gross recounted the story of his transfer from other POW camps, in much more open, arid parts of the US. Willi Gross was a German POW captured by British soldiers along the North African front. He was transported to the United States, and held and transported to several different POW camps throughout the United States before being sent to Camp Adair. Strangely, a good amount of Gross’ retelling is spent reminiscing about how similar Oregon is to Germany. Additionally, he befriended a guard at Camp Adair with whom he reconnected with after the war had ended and he had been released. In his account, Gross recounted his arrival in Camp Adair and explains how he worked on nearby farms, helping to harvest crops in the area. For example, Gross remembers cutting grass for hay bales and harvesting bean crops.^[8] This is corroborated by another Camp Adair Sentry article, printed in May 1943, entitled “Axis War Prisoners May Work for Allies.” This article states that Axis POWs will be working as farm laborers throughout Allied territories for the remainder of the war.^[9]

The third major piece of evidence demonstrating the likelihood that Camp Adair housed POWs comes from the final Camp Adair Sentry article paper entitled “No War Prisoners Here, NSC Reports.”^[10] The article continues that the Ninth Service Command (NSC) ”quashed [rumors]…via Associated Press wire reports from Salt Lake City.”[11] It’s clear from the wording of the article “current rumors about using a portion of Camp Adair for war prisoners have been quashed,” that enough.^[12] There was fabricated evidence either from the newspaper, or the Associated Press which corroborated the lie that there were no POWs in Camp Adair.

The POWs in Camp Adair were there out of necessity. There were certainly other camps that would be more well suited as prisons than Camp Adair. However, because of Gross’ account, there is proof POWs were in Adair. POWs were kept in Camp Adair because farmers needed all hands-on-deck for the war effort. With the number of able-bodied men deployed across seas, whether because they had volunteered or had been drafted, there were few left over to harvest crops. Additionally, OSC coordinated volunteer harvesting groups, which included apple picking and harvesting sugar beets. However, despite their limited supply of labor, the OSC board voted that “women would not be allowed to join in the apple picking project.”^[13] Robbins mentions this in his book, but doesn’t speculate the reasoning. Whatever it may be, if there were too few men to harvest local crops and women weren’t allowed to join the effort, the fact remains that labor was scarce. For the US military, the answer may have been simple. There weren’t enough workers for these valuable farms that produced necessary crops such as sugar beets and grass for feeding livestock, and they had a surplus of able-bodied men (POWs) at their disposal.

I believe that the Camp Adair administrators were so secretive about POWs being housed there because Camp Adair was not a suitable prison. Locals who wouldn’t be using POW labor would not have been happy about their new neighbors, the landscape itself did not lend itself to the task, and Camp Adair simply wasn’t built as a secure facility, but rather as a training ground. This meant that the area produced more food than its local workers could reasonably harvest with the equipment on-hand, because the war had taken so many of its able-bodied workers. As far as the US government perceived the issue, they were solving the problem by positively utilizing another problem. That being, the lack of workers could be solved with the surplus of prisoners they were controlling. This created a win-win situation, besides the necessary secrecy.

The use of Prisoners of War as laborers was not unprecedented. Allied forces used Italian and German POWs to harvest crops throughout the war.^[14] Germany used loopholes in the Geneva Convention to classify POWs, particularly those from Poland, as “civilian guest workers” so that the former soldiers would become, in essence, slaves.^[15] POWs were kept in good health by the US and Britain because of a sort of “status quo” of soldiers. The British and German military had shown that poor treatment of the enemy’s POWs would result in an equal or even greater mistreatment of their own soldiers held captive by enemy forces. The Axis and Ally stance of mutually assured destruction of POWs both kept POWs safe and put them in danger. If you don’t keep our soldiers well, we’ll reciprocate in kind.^[16] This status quo created by both Axis and Ally leaders is why the US government felt so comfortable using POWs as labor in Camp Adair. They were simply returning in kind the treatment which had befallen their own soldiers. This included being well fed, and receiving medical treatment.

William Robbins’ statement that “few locals knew about the Prisoners of War” makes a lot more sense in the present tense than it does in the past tense.^[17] Few locals know about the area’s history with POWs, but knowledge and cooperation were a requirement to have POWs in Camp Adair. POWs were only present in the area because they were a necessity for the war effort and to get the greater population through a time of rationing. There is a precedent for this being the case brought up by historian Jake Spidle, Jr..  Spidle argues in his article ”Axis Prisoners of War in the United States,” that the number of people knowledgeable about POWs held in the US is only going to shrink over time. Spidle was able to find several farmers that used POWs during the war. ”With a bit of luck,” he says, ”a diligent researcher may find them.”^[18] That may have been true in 1975, but it is certainly a rare find in 2023. Even so, with the information gathered between several archives, an understanding of the past with greater clarity can be produced.

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^[1] William Robbins, A People’s School: A History of Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2017), 160.

^[2] “203 POW Camps,” Camp Adair Sentry, June 9, 1944, 7, University of Oregon Historic Oregon Newspapers Collection, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn94052685/1944-06-09/ed-1/seq-7/.

[3] The article itself has the subheading “Washington D.C. (ALNS).” This acronym doesn’t seem to be associated with any US press agency, or POW associated group. The assumption made in this article is that this was published in multiple army-run newspapers like the Camp Adair Sentry throughout the United States. ALNS may be a typo, or an acronym that was rarely, if ever used.

^[4] The author is currently a resident of the area and is familiar with the buildings in town.

^[5] John Sessions, lecture series, “OSU’s Old Growth Forests,” Sustainable Forests, Oregon State University, 2022.

^[6] “Memories of Sergeant Willi Gross,” Oregon State University Special Collections & Archive Research Center (hereafter SCARC), Memorabilia Collection: Business and Technology, School of 1923-2000  — Campus Fires. 1898-2002. Box 32. SC 01.02.03.14, Folder “MC Calvert, Leonard J.”

^[7] Jake W. Spidle, Jr., ”Axis Prisoners of War in the United States, 1942-1946: A Bibliographical Essay,” in Military

Affairs 39, no. 2 (1975): 64.

^[8] “Memories of Sergeant Willi Gross.”

^[9] “Axis War Prisoners May Work for Allies,” Camp Adair Sentry, May 27, 1943, 10, University of Oregon Historic Oregon Newspapers Collection, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn94052685/1943-05-27/ed-1/seq-10/.

^[10] “No War Prisoners Here, NSC Reports.”.

[11] Ibid.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Robbins, A People’s School, 156.

^[14] S. P. MacKenzie, “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II,” The Journal of Modern History 66, no. 3 (1994): 489.

^[15] Ibid, 500-501.

^[16] Ibid, 489.

^[17] Robbins, A People’s School, 160.

^[18] Spidle Jr, Military Affairs, 64.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Lily Ayola.

The document I have chosen outlines many facets of the Army Specialized Training program at Oregon State University during World War 2. This document was produced in 1943 and is in very good shape according to the digital version of this document. The part of the document that I am analyzing is the eligibility requirements for joining the army specialized training program (ASTP) at Oregon State College (OSC).^[1] The document first explains that the program was created because the men that were being sent to the army lacked what the army was looking for in a leader. This document gave me some background on the ASTP as well as led me to many other documents. After this document, I was left wondering why Oregon State College was chosen by the ASTP.

At Oregon State College (now known as Oregon State University) there was a program called the Army Specialized Training Program which was implemented in 1943 and dismantled in 1946. This program was meant to create a new “breed” of solder, an educated man who was capable of leading his fellow men in war.^[2] The main objective of my research was to find out why Oregon State College was chosen for this program.

What I have found using archival documents at OSC points to a couple of possible conclusions. Those conclusions being that the Army needed engineers, that OSC seemed willing to change the curriculum and rigor of their classes, while also adding completely new classes that would better serve the ASTP agenda. According to the “Biennial Report of Oregon State College” meeting notes I analyzed for the years 1943-1944, university administrators added more language courses and more nuances to said courses to service the ASTP students.^[3] It’s also through the analysis of this meeting that we can see how willing OSC was to change or add courses. This was very favorable for the ASTP and probably was a main reason for why the ASTP decided to set up camp at OSC. This leads me to my first secondary source titled “Birth and Death of the Army Specialized Training Program” by Louis E. Keefer, where he discusses many topics, but most importantly he discussed the implementation of the quarter system, which was developed to help men returning from war learn more in a shorter period of time. I’m sure this revised schedule also helped men learn faster so they could leave for the army as well.^[4]

One of my main conclusions was that OSC had a lot of engineers already attending the school, so it was easy to implement the ASTP at OSC if there was an embedded baseline interest in the major the army wanted most, engineering. First, I analyzed the 1942-1943 registration statistics, which showed that in the spring term of the 1942-43 school year, engineering was the most popular major.^[5] This sort of answers my question, that this is probably the leading factor in OSC being chosen to host the ASTP. OSC had a lot of people attending school already who were interested in continuing their education in engineering, which the ASTP stated was one of the majors they wanted more people to enroll in. The next thing to analyze is the enrollment numbers specifically for the ASTP. Something about this that I immediately found interesting was they only list the enrollment for students in the following majors: Basic Engineering, Advanced Engineering, ROTC seniors, and “area and language”.^[6] This information suggests that even though the Army was looking for people in more areas than those listed, these were the only majors they really cared about. The next source I looked at seems to be a collection of letters requesting credits from the Mr. E.B. Lemon. From what I understand, these students either weren’t given the proper credits for classes they took at OSC, or they took similar classes in high school, so they wanted college credits for those courses.^[7] All of these letters imply that young men at the time really wanted to meet the requirements to join the ASTP, which goes towards my question of why Oregon State was chosen, and maybe it was because there was so much interest. The next source I looked at was the Camp Adair Sentry newspapers to see if there was anything regarding the ASTP there and I found an article from 1944 talking about how ASTP registration was open again,^[8] as it had been closed for some time. This is interesting, as I discovered the Army could only have 150,000 trainees at a time, and this lets me know it was a popular program to enter, and men seemed eager to join the ASTP.^[9] One thing I found intriguing was that there was a course just called “military”. Although, later in the ASTP policies and procedures book it lists the fact that students could now choose to strike the military course from their schedules, meaning they wouldn’t have to take it anymore under ASTP guidelines.^[10] My theory for why this happened was because it was taking up too much time, and schools needed these Army men to be learning faster.

Another point I have for why OSC was chosen for the ASTP is because of how eligible the men at OSC already were prior to the ASTP being implemented. According to the Army Specialized Training Program “essential facts” under the “eligibility” section of the booklet, the army created this program within colleges to encourage a flow of educated men from a college into the Army. Any man that had scored a 115 in the Army General Classification Test qualified for the ASTP, but they needed to meet some other education requirements. These requirements included: efficiency in a language or taking a class for one year that involves math, physics, or biology. These qualifications were raised based on how long they’ve been in college and how old they are. Men aged 22 or older needed “substantial background in one or more foreign languages” or their education had to include a year of math, physics, or biology. Men who had completed three years of college needed to major in either engineering, pre-medicine, or pre-dentistry.^[11] According to my secondary source titled “ASTP” by John R. Craf, where he discusses the eligibility requirements for young men to join the ASTP, the eligibility requirements here are slightly different from the ones I found in the “essential facts” booklet, which were more specific.^[12] It seems that the program simply evolved. We know that OSC joined the ASTP program in the spring of 1943, and this paper was written in November of 1943, so maybe the requirements changed before the program made it to OSC. Overall, the ASTP at OSC was an institution designed to bring as many educated men into the army as possible. It does seem like they were desperate for members but never short of willing young men who wanted nothing more than to fight for their country.

In conclusion, I can use these sources to infer that the ASTP chose OSC because it was a valuable place for them to hold their program. OSC had a high volume of engineering majors already at the school, and OSC was willing to shift curriculum to better accommodate the ASTP requirements. These factors made OSC a good place for the ASTP to set up their program to bring more educated men into the Army.

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^[1] US Army Services Army Specialized Training Program, Essential Facts About the Army Specialized Training Program (Army Specialized Training Division: Washington, D.C., 1943).

^[2] US Army Services ASTP, Essential Facts, 1.

^[3] “Biennial Report of Oregon State College 1943-1944,” Special Collections Archive and Research Center (hereafter SCARC), Registrar’s Office, RG 013- SG 12 Box 9 Folder 10.

^[4] Louis E. Keefer, “Birth and Death of the Army Specialized Training Program,” Army History 33 (Winter 1995).

^[5] “Registration Statistics 1942-’43,” SCARC, Registrar’s Office, RG 053-SG 1 Box 9.

^[6] “ASTP Registration Statistics 1943-44 to 1945-46,” SCARC, Registrar’s Office, RG 053-SG 1 Box 23.

^[7] Letter from Office of the Dean of the School of Engineering and Industrial Arts to Oregon State Registrar E.B. Lemon, October 18, 1941, SCARC, Registrar’s Office, RG 053-SG 1 Box 23, Special Military and Defense Courses World War II, item #2.

^[8] “Limited ASTP Schools Again Open to All GIs Not Now in the Infantry,” Camp Adair Sentry, June 30, 1944: 2,  https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn94052685/1944-06-30/ed-1/seq-2/#words=ASTP.

^[9] US Army Services, Essential Facts About the Army Specialized Training Program, 3.

^[10] “Biennial Report of Oregon State College 1943-1944,” SCARC, Registrar’s Office, RG 013- SG 12 Box 9 Folder 10.

^[11] US Army Services, Essential Facts About the Army Specialized Training Program, 2-3.

^[12] John R. Craf, “ASTP,” The Journal of Higher Education 14, no. 8 (1943): 399, https://doi.org/10.2307/1975350.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Hannah Beine.

The disruption caused by World War II transformed the experiences of colleges and universities across the United States. The onset of the war led to the departure of students and staff, changes in enrollment and courses, and new campus activities. As the college community dealt with the changes, there were efforts from OSC faculty-led committees and student-led organizations to collect details on Oregon State College’s participation in the war. College administrators embarked on documenting and collecting an array of projects and experiences within the Oregon State College community. They selected specific items for collection, including reports on faculty members and students who left for military service, as well as documenting the college’s changes in financial, academic, and social aspects. The endeavor aimed to gather various publications containing information about the college and individuals associated with the Beaver community.

While the primary goal was to chronicle OSC’s financial, organizational, and academic changes, the collection process also placed an emphasis on capturing the war’s human impact both overseas and on campus. Each piece of documentation provided insight into the experiences of the Beaver community during the war that could be added to the collective archive. The war changed the way of life for college communities across the United States and “never before had the nation been so united in its commitment to a cause, both in spirit and deed.” ^[1]The work and devotion put towards assembling war-time information highlighted the patriotism and pride within the Oregon State community, not only from employees but the students as well.

Oregon State College’s efforts to record its history during World War II all began with a conference that took place in October 1944. William L. Teutsch, the Assistant Director of Extension Services,  sent a memorandum to Dean William A. Schoenfeld, the Dean of Oregon State College, that outlined the plan of action for collecting information regarding the college during the war, known as the World War II History Project.^[2] The conference took place on October 24, 1944 and was led by Dr. L. S. Cressman, the Director of the World War II History Project and Director of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oregon. The memorandum provides a complete list of the members present at the meeting, including the Acting Dean of Agriculture, the Dean of Forestry, a representative of the Dean of the School of Home Economics, and the College Editor and Chairman of the Campus Committee. The inclusion of diverse departments appears to be an attempt to provide the project with multiple avenues to receive documents and information regarding the college’s participation in the ongoing war.

This document outlines the main points discussed and agreed upon at the conference, all of which provided a layout for the WWII History Project. These points included outlining and recording crucial war emergency activities such as records of OSC staff and students being released to serve in the military. It also provides examples of how to document these activities, emphasizing that the collection of records might span several years. The purpose of this project was to “make the experiences of war work a matter of record for use of the Executive Department in case similar occasion should arise in the future requiring executive action.”^[3] This project recognized the importance of archiving information as a means to help guide future responses to similar situations.

There are multiple memorandums and related correspondence found within the archives, indicating that there was ample communication between individuals contributing to the World War II History Project. Often, there were requests for information or clarifying details between committee members and other individuals they were collecting information from. The well-preserved documentation implies that the committee members deemed the process of recording the activities of the Oregon State College community important and valuable.

Newspapers and publications like The Barometer, the Oregon State Yank, and other local newspapers provided the World War II History Project committee with a convenient means of collecting and requesting information. The collection and preservation of editions of the Oregon State Yank, a quarterly publication,  seemed to be an important piece of documentation.^[4] This importance is underlined by the multitude of letters between L.S. Cressman, the Director of the World War II History Project, and Delmer Goode, the Editor of Publications at OSC, regarding the acquisition of the Oregon State Yank for the World War II History Project collection.^[5]

This publication was focused on sharing real stories sent in from service members overseas, providing first-person accounts of experiences, and “an insider’s view of the war from the frontlines.”^[6] The attempt at securing first-hand accounts from OSC service members extended beyond OSC campus publications. In 1945, Cressman made an appeal in the Herald and News, a newspaper from Klamath Falls, Oregon, inviting families across Oregon to share information about relatives serving in the war. Information could be sent in by family members or other individuals with connections to OSC with the hopes it provided helpful insight to the WWII History Project collection.

The endeavor to collect information regarding Oregonians overseas through newspapers demonstrated the importance of fostering a sense of community and unity. The war not only united all Americans towards a common goal but also seemed to instill a strong sense of solidarity and patriotism within the Oregon State College community.^[7] The 1945 column “Our Voice in the Wind” from The Barometer refers to a suggestion by a serviceman to create an OSC ring that students and alumni could wear while in the service.^[8] The serviceman proposed this idea in order to make it easier to identify fellow OSC members serving throughout the world. This emphasized the importance of maintaining school pride, not only for those still on campus but also for those who were longing for community overseas.

The World War II History Project collected reports from many different available resources, some of which exemplified this sense of OSC unity through on-campus student war-related experiences. One of the most valuable student organizations for understanding the involvement of students in supporting and gathering information about OSC’s wartime participation was the OSC Student War Council, including both male and female students on campus. The Student War Council’s main objective was to organize and report on all activities at Oregon State College connected to the ongoing war.^[9] At the end of each activity, the Council would create a complete report on the activity, documenting the experience, which could then be put into the WWII History Project collection. Not only were these activities and reports a means of collecting information, but they also were a showcase of patriotism and school spirit.

A sense of collaboration between OSC and the other participating colleges in the World War II History Project is shown through the large amount of correspondence between them, as well as their willingness to participate in document collection. Colleges within California, Oregon, and Washington created the Federation of College War Councils which was a means of sharing information relating to war activities at colleges within these states.^[10] These reports provided insight into the different activities that took place on various campuses by students who were not serving overseas. They provide a different perspective and insight into the civilian experience. These experiences, alongside those sent in and published in newspapers like the Oregon State Yank, offer a better understanding of the wartime experiences of students and faculty at Oregon State College.

The World War II History Project allowed members of Oregon State College, as well as the other participating colleges, to assemble the experiences of the Beaver community during the war into a consolidated archive. The collected documents highlight a more administrative look at the transformation of OSC during World War II while also showcasing the important work of OSC students in organizing and recording the campus experiences of community support for American troops fighting in the war. The Student War Council calls attention to the broader college and university experience during World War II. Oregon State College was not isolated in the participation of its students. The Federation of College War Councils confirms the focus on organizing and recording support from communities throughout the United States. The focus exhibited by individuals at Oregon State College to preserve the wartime experience underlines the importance of collecting documents. The World War II History Project has provided future generations with the opportunity to learn about the wartime experiences that helped shape the Beaver community.

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^[1] V. R. Cardozier, Colleges and Universities in World War II (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 123.

^[2] Wm. L. Teutsch, “Memorandum of Conference with Dr. L.S. Cressman, Director of World War II History Project and Director of Museum of Natural History, University of Oregon,” October 25, 1944, Special Collections and Archives Research Center (hereafter SCARC), Oregon State College History of World War II Project Records MSS OSCWW2, Box 1.

^[3] “Memorandum of discussion between faculty members of Oregon State College,” October 24, 1944, SCARC, History of World War II Project Records MSS OSCWW2 Box 1, Correspondence 1944-1946, page 1.

^[4] “Beginning with this issue,” Oregon State Yank no. 2 (May 1944): 1, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx719t22q.

^[5] L.S. Cressman to Delmer M. Goode, November 16, 1944, SCARC, History of World War II Project Records MSS OSCWW2 Box 1, Correspondence 1944-1946.

^[6] Mary Weaks-Baxter, C. Brunn, and C. Forslund, We are a college at war: women working for victory in World War II (Carbondale, IL:Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), 17.

^[7]“Appeal Made for Documents Of Overseas Service Men,” Herald and News, September 30, 1944, 9, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn99063813/1944-09-30/ed-1/seq-9/.

^[8]“Our Voice in the World,” Oregon State Barometer, February 9, 1945, 2, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/8k71nk933.

^[9] “War Council,” The Beaver 1945, Oregon State University Yearbooks, 202,  Oregon Digital,, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/12579s71x.

^[10]Cardozier, Colleges and Universities, 124.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

This post was written by Eliza Eckman.

In Nazi Germany, art emerged as a treasure—stolen, created, and hidden. Gordon Gilkey led the charge to recover these artworks. His mission involved collecting and preserving war-related artifacts, confiscating works tied to Nazism, and facilitating artwork restitution. After WWII, in August 1947, he became Professor of Art and Chairman of the Art Department at Oregon State College (OSC), and the following year he earned recognition from the French Government. Gilkey’s service during the war as an academic turned serviceman was not an isolated case; numerous faculty members at OSC and across the nation, extending from librarians to camouflage course teachers, also served in the military and contributed to specialized war work.

Gilkey grew up on a ranch outside of Albany, Oregon and attended Albany College (now Lewis and Clark College) in Portland, Oregon starting in 1929 and completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Oregon in 1936. Gilkey married, and he and his wife, Vivian Malone, moved to New York City, where she pursued studies at the Juilliard School of Music. While in New York, he created a book of reproductions and originals that documented the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Gilkey later taught at Stevens College in Colombia, Missouri from fall 1939 until he joined the Army Air Forces in June 1942.^[1]

In an October 1943 letter, Gilkey, serving as a supervisor of instruction for the Advanced Navigation School at the Central Flying Training Command (CFCT) in Ellington Field, Texas, expressed interest in joining the Commission for the Protection of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe. This commission, established a month earlier, sought soldiers with backgrounds in the arts to assist the US Army in safeguarding works of cultural value. Gilkey directed his letter to the chairman and founder, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, and commission member Paul Sachs, a Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard. Gilkey outlined his civilian experience, including his education, art collection ownership, and teaching experience. He explained that, “As an officer in the Army Air Forces, the writer could be useful in aiding a determination of what to bomb and what to preserve. The writer is familiar with aerial photo interpretation and bombing procedures. Later, he could help reassemble Europe’s collections – especially graphic art collections.”^[2] Sachs forwarded Gilkey’s letter to David Finley, director of the National Gallery of Art, and added that Gilkey was a potential Monuments Officer, along with other candidates with possibly superior qualifications.^[3] Gilkey’s superiors at the CFTC denied his repeated requests to contribute to art preservation in combat zones, citing a lack of skilled personnel within the CFTC. To overcome this reluctance, Gilkey discovered a loophole: by undergoing combat intelligence training, he could be released from the role of supervisor of instructors, as the combat intelligence school held higher authority over the CFTC and faced its own shortage.^[4] Upon completing his training in 1945, Gilkey contacted Boyd Shafer, one of the teachers he had overseen and who had become a speechwriter for Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Gilkey stated, “I’ve got to get to Europe. I want to be involved in resurrecting the art, working with art.” Shafer’s connection with Stimson facilitated Gilkey’s assignment, and Gilkey promptly took charge of the War Department’s Special Staff Art Projects.^[5]

In his 1947 German War Art report, produced for the Army, Gilkey explained his work from the previous year, which involved collecting, processing, and preserving war-related artifacts, confiscating works of art dedicated to the promotion of Nazism, and returning paintings back to their owners. Gilkey detailed how larger paintings owned by Hitler were moved from Munich to salt bins at a refining plant in 1944 since they didn’t fit in the salt mines with other valuables. Some paintings were delayed due to a truck breakdown and traced to a dance room in St. Agatha, Austria.^[6] Gilkey also outlined the direct restitution of paintings from Schloss Oberfrauenau, affirming that these artworks, acknowledged as rightfully owned by the artists who originally created them, should be returned.^[7] As the operation concluded in summer 1946, Mrs. Gilkey informed her husband about a vacant position as the chairman of the art department at OSC, and despite a job offer from NBC in New York, he returned to Oregon in August 1947 to become a Professor of Art and Chairman of the Art Department.^[8]

Seven months after Gilkey began teaching at OSC, he received a letter notifying him that the French Government had awarded him the title of “Officer d’Academie” a distinction seldom granted to non-French individuals. Alfred Herman, Consul of France at the Agence Consulaire de France in Portland, Oregon, wrote the letter dated March 11, 1948. The one-page letter, typed on standard-size printer paper, is a copy. This distinction entailed an honorary degree from the French University and High Education System. The award also granted Gilkey the privilege of wearing the Palmes Academiques decoration in recognition of his devoted services to France. Herman offered to forward the diploma directly or arrange an official presentation, and he commended Gilkey for his help in the restitution of French Museum properties.^[9] This communication provides insight into the recognition of the contributions of individuals associated with the college regarding World War II, highlighting how these contributions likely positively influenced the college’s reputation.

Gilkey’s work coincided with a broader trend among OSC staff members in the humanities and the library who left for military service. In 1943, the Eugene Register-Guard published an articlethat listed the resignations of several personnel from OSC, including Priscilla Ferguson, a library cataloger, and Ruth Krueger, a circulation librarian.^[10] OSC further documented the resignations and temporary leaves in a document titled “Record of Staff Members Released for War Activities.” For example, Kenneth Munford, an English Instructor, became Captain of the 2nd Mapping Squadron in Spokane, Washington.^[11] In a letter dated November 1945, Wm. H. Carlson, Director of the Libraries, described the wartime work of his staffers for the benefit of Delmar Goode, the Editor of Publications at OSC. He explained that Grace Beecher, a reference assistant, had assumed the role of librarian at the Camp Adair Medical Unit.^[12] Another November 1945 letter from the Dean of the Lower Division, Ellwood Smith, to Goode detailed the involvement of Lower Division faculty in the war effort, including those from the fields of Art, Economics, English, History, Psychology, Speech, and Journalism. Major H. R. Sinnard, Associate Professor from the Art department, chaired the Training Board for the camouflage course at Belvoir Engineering School. He used his artistic skills and expertise to design fake inflatable rubber tanks and artillery, as well as to create camouflage patterns.^[13] This all demonstrates that wartime efforts encompass industries extending beyond the traditionally emphasized sectors.

Faculty and librarians across the country made significant contributions to the wartime efforts. Led by Frederick Kilgour from the Harvard Widener Library, the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC) primarily used faculty to facilitate the acquisition of print sources for intelligence purposes. Simultaneously, faculty assumed leadership roles in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Bands. While stationed in Stockholm, Adele Kibre, a Latin Instructor at the University of Chicago and an undercover agent, obtained publications through newspaper subscriptions and bookstores, microfilmed materials from Swedish institutions, and collaborated with the Norwegian underground to intercept mail from Berlin to Oslo.^[14] Additional efforts from professors included female music teachers who became directors of the WAC Bands. Mary Waterman, who taught at the Crane Normal Institute of Music, enlisted in 1942, and attended Army Music School. She became a Warrant Officer and served as director of the 400th WAC Band. In 1943, Professor Leonora Brown of South Carolina State University enlisted. She assumed the role of director for the 404th WAC Band—an all-female African American Army band. Both leaders led their ensembles on a tour across the United States as part of national war bond drives and conducted martial performances on bases and in hospital wards.^[15]

The intersections of the humanities and military service prompt reflection on the impact that university faculty, including Gilkey, had during World War II. Gilkey took his wartime experiences back to OSC, and in October 1947, OSC exhibited two sets of Nazi art collected by Gilkey: one that Hitler deemed ideologically acceptable and retrieved from hidden locations, and the other, acquired directly from artists disapproved by the regime.^[16] This show, representative of Gilkey’s work, also symbolized the contributions of OSC’s faculty and the role of universities across the United States in wartime efforts.

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^[1] Gordon Gilkey, “Gordon Gilkey Oral History Interview,” June 27, 1980, Special Collections & Archives Research Center (hereafter SCARC), http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/items/show/34451.

^[2] Gordon Gilkey to Owen Roberts, October 5, 1943, The National Archives, Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission), Staff Correspondence, Miscellaneous Correspondence-G, 8, Retrieved from Fold3: https://www.fold3.com/image/270025421?terms=gilkey,art,gordon.

^[3] Paul Sachs to David Finley, January 24, 1944, The National Archives, The Roberts Commission,  Correspondence with Commission Members and Personnel, David Finley, 8, Retrieved from Fold3: https://www.fold3.com/image/270311993.  

^[4] Gilkey, “Oral History Interview,” 1980.

^[5] Gordon Gilkey, “Oral History Interview with Gordon W. Gilkey,” January 1, 1998, Oregon Historical Society, https://digitalcollections.ohs.org/oral-history-interview-with-gordon-w-gilkey-transcript.

^[6] Gilkey, German War Art, Procurement.

^[7] “Paintings to be Restituted to Artists,” from Gordon Gilkey to Chief of the Monument program, Fine Arts and Archives Section,October 1, 1946, The National Archives, Records Concerning the Central Collecting Points, Restitution Claim Records, Austria Claims, 11, Retrieved from Fold3: https://www.fold3.com/image/269943979?terms=gilkey,art,gordon.

^[8] Gilkey, “Oral History Interview,” 1980.

^[9] Alfred Herman to Gordon Gilkey, March 11, 1948, SCARC, News and Communication Services, Biological Files, RG 203, Folder 4.171-4.191.

^[10] “State Board Boosts Salary of Educators,” Eugene Register-Guard, April 27, 1943, 2, https://books.google.com/books?id=E7BWAAAAIBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

^[11] “Record of Staff Members Released for War Activities,” undated, SCARC, OSC History of World War II Project Records, Box 1, List of Staff Granted Leaves 1940-1946.

^[12] Wm. H. Carlson to Delmar Goode, November 20, 1945, SCARC, OSC History of World War II Project Reports, Box 1, Correspondence Reports 1944-1947.

^[13] Ellwood Smith to Delmar Goode, November 16, 1945, SCARC, OSC History of World War II Project Reports, Box 1, OSC Participation.

^[14] Kathy Peiss, Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 40-46.

^[15] Jill Sullivan, “Women Music Teachers as Military Band Directors During World War II,” Sage Journals 39, no.1 (2017): 78-90, https://doi.org/10.1177/1536600616665625.

^[16] “Contrasting Displays of Nazi Art Shown,” Eugene Register-Guard, October 15, 1947, 17, https://books.google.com/books?id=2o8RAAAAIBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

During fall term 2023 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

This post was written by Madison Stoops.

The United States’ entrance into World War II halted life on campus for many students. Oregon State College, as it was known at the time, was no different. The institution that once focused solely on the education of its students, shifted gears, and began to focus on assisting in the war effort. No school on campus was left unchanged in this new pursuit, but in the halls of history, little attention has been paid to the contributions made by the School of Home Economics. The School of Home Economics of Oregon State College helped in the war effort through its involvement in various nutrition programs that addressed the nutritional needs of a public taxed by the stresses of war.

Initially established in 1889, the School of Home Economics predates the history of Oregon State University as we know it today.[1] Seemingly, the department did not grow large enough to be considered a school until the year 1908, where I found the first mention of the shift from department to school.[2] Although the School of Home Economics currently does not exist in any official regards and has not since 2002, when it “merged with the College of Health and Human Performance, thereby forming the College of Health and Human Sciences,” traces of its legacy can still be seen throughout the Corvallis campus.[3] Notably by Milam Hall, renamed in honor of Ava Milam, the Dean of the School of Home Economics, in 1976.[4]

The Biennial Report for the School of Home Economics from around mid-WWII initially sparked my interest in this research topic. It provides interesting details on how the ongoing war affected the School of Home Economics at Oregon State College. Ava Milam wrote in her 1942-43 and 1943-44 Biennial Report, “Despite the effect of the war on college attendance in general, the School of Home Economics has maintained its peace-time enrollment.”[5] The only data I can locate that mentions precise information regarding student enrollment in the School of Home Economics for one year, comes from 1940 and it cites there being 700 attendees.[6] This lack of change in attendance level made the school stand out in comparison to the other Schools at Oregon State College, and it is doubly impressive when one considers the number of women who were leaving education to pursue war jobs.[7] Even though the school was unaffected in terms of enrollment, the same could not be said for their access to materials. The program found difficultly in replacing essential items needed for Home Economics courses. Particularly for the “Clothing and Textiles department,” which had to change how their materials were utilized during this time.[8] This was just one of the many changes brought upon Home Economics by the war.

Arguably Ava Milam brought the most changes to Home Economics at Oregon State College. Milam joined the college in 1911 initially to serve as the “head of the Department of Domestic Science.”[9] She later became the Dean of the School of Home Economics from 1917 to 1950.[10] During Milam’s time at Oregon State College, nutrition and Home Economics became linked, no doubt in large part because of her dual positions as both the Dean of the School of Home Economics and as chairperson of the Nutrition-for-Defense program.[11] This trend continued on, and under her leadership in the 1920’s and 1930s, the focus on nutrition within home economics was greatly expanded upon, with classes offered in “nutrition of the infant and child” of note.[12] Just about a little over half a year before the US entered WWII, Milam went to “the inaugural National Nutrition Conference.”[13] Milam’s early interest in furthering the spread of nutrition education certainly would come in handy when, during the war, she would go on to lead Oregon’s nutrition program.[14] This was an impressive show of leadership under such trying times.

This link between home economics and nutrition was further strengthened during the outbreak of World War II when the Nutrition for Defense program entered the forefront. In Milam’s own words, the program “gave a refresher course for Red Cross nutrition teachers and participated in the work of a state nutrition committee for coordinating all nutrition projects in furthering war mobilization.”[15] Community outreach through instruction on proper eating habits also became a prime mode of supporting the war effort. In this spirit, OSC offered public classes related to nutrition.[16] A quick glance at the Oregon State College catalog from 1944-45 also demonstrates this dedication to the community with a course called “Community Problems in Nutrition.”[17] Additionally, with the scarcity of resources during the war, the nutrition courses offered at OSC began to focus on reducing waste.[18]

Though World War II put a pause on much of campus life, it did not slow down the School of Home Economics. Under Milam’s leadership the school thrived and went above and beyond in aiding in the war effort on the home front. Noticing the lack of proper nutrition education in the community during the war, the Home Economics faculty took charge and filled the gaps present in public knowledge. They achieved this through providing accessible public courses on nutrition and by training essential professionals. It cannot be understated how much of an impact OSC’s School of Home Economics had on the war effort.

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[1] “Home Economics at Oregon State,” Oregon State University, History of Home Economics at Oregon State – Home Economics at Oregon State – LibGuides at Oregon State University

[2] “Home Economics at Oregon State.”

[3] “Home Economics at Oregon State.”

[4] Milam Hall – OSU Buildings Histories in the Special Collections and Archives Research Center – LibGuides at Oregon State University.

[5] Biennial Report School of Home Economics Biennium 1942-43 and 1943-44, Special Collections and Archives Research Center (hereafter SCARC) Box 9 Folder 9, p.1.

[6] “Home Economics at Oregon State.”

[7] Taylor Jaworski, “’You’re in the Army Now:’ The Impact of World War II on Women’s Education, Work, and Family,” The Journal of Economic History 74 no.4 (2014):175-176, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24550554.

[8] Biennial Report School of Home Economics Biennium 1942-43 and 1943-44, SCARC, Box 9 Folder 9, p.1.

[9] “Oregon State University College and Department Histories: Home Economics History” Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/df71wk95q

[10] “Home Economics History.”

[11]  Oregon State University Yearbooks, Oregon State University. “The Beaver 1943” Oregon Digital. Accessed 2023-12-13, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx719t41x.

[12] Ava Milam, Sixty Years of Growth in Home Economics (Oregon State Board of Higher Education, 1950), 6-15.

[13] William G. Robbins, The People’s School: A History of Oregon State University (Corvallis: Oregon State Press, 2017), 162.

[14] Robbins, The People’s School, 161.

[15] Milam, Sixty Years of Growth in Home Economics, 7.

[16] “Nutrition Expert to Teach Subject,” Oregon State Barometer, March 31, 1942.

[17] Oregon State College, Oregon State System of Higher Education Catalogs 1944-45, 262-63.

[18] “Biennial Report of Oregon State College, 1941-1942” p.65, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71d395d

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair’s history.

By Brooklyn Blair, Grace Matteo, and Ruiqi Zhang

One of the expectations of women during World War II, including women at Oregon State College, was that they uphold and promote their own and others’ physical health in order to support the war effort. We discovered that women’s physical health was heavily promoted at OSC, both in the student newspaper and through various clubs and organizations dedicated to 1940s understandings of women’s physical well-being. While participation in athletics had a longer history at OSC, World War II prompted a specific emphasis on women’s physical conditioning.

We first became interested in this topic when we saw a section in the March 1942 issue of the Oregon State Barometer called “Women Leaders, Professor Stress Need for Conditioning.”

The section includes personal accounts from four women at OSC, all of whom call on readers to prioritize health and enlist in a new workout program for women. One author, Jean Ford, encourages readers to lose weight and “awaken muscles” and urges them to “sign up for the physical fitness program and stick to it” because “it’s your duty.” Toddy Gates, president of OSC’s Women’s Athletic Association, insists participating was the best way women could serve their country because it would prepare them to work in “emergency positions.” Mortar Board president Kay Serberg argued that a trained mind and body were equally important and that “new-fangled diets” were not an effective way to become healthy.[1] The article was accompanied by a poem celebrating OSC women’s role in fighting the war, which demanded their “strength” as well as courage.

We soon discovered other examples of women being urged to pursue fitness as an obligation in wartime. A 1943 OAC report on women’s intramural athletics, for example, stressed that athletic opportunities were important to help women maintain what was considered a proper figure. In another Barometer article, Dr. Eva M. Seen insisted that “emergency conditions will demand more vigorous, more strength and toughness of body than has been demanded of us during the past few years of soft living.” This included women, who “may not be drafted and have to face the rigid military tests of physical fitness, but they must face squarely and honestly the fact that they as well as the men must carry their share of the burden of defense.” Specifically, she asked OSC’s women students if they were physically fit enough to “meet the probable demands of long hours of labor in the fields, fruit orchards, vegetable gardens, canneries, canteen work, first aid stations or the strain of long confining hours in defense factories without the danger of physical strain or injury or complete physical breakdown?”[2]

These examples indicate that physical health was highly stressed for women during the war, but there remained conflict over the methods and meaning of women’s physical activity. Many advocated health as necessary for the war effort, but others tended to emphasize conditioning as a way to improve women’s appearance. For example, the historian Rachel Louise Moran notes, for example, that “women’s weights were sometimes a point of contention” in the Women’s Army Corp.”[3] Mark Ellner, meanwhile, has documented resistance to women’s participation in Olympic sports, quoting one leader insisting that the games “should be the sole purview of men,” leaving women to “crown . . . the winner with garlands, as was their role in ancient Greece.”[4]

Discussions of women’s physical health at World War II-era Oregon State College suggest that World War II might have been a historical turning point. The military and industrial requirements of the war seemed to provide new opportunities and promote new understandings of physical fitness and education for women. Did wartime demand for physical fitness affect how women thought about themselves, their bodies, and their roles in society? Perhaps it helped pave the way toward greater equality for women in athletics and the labor market later in the twentieth century.

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[1] “Women Leaders, Professor Stress Need for Conditioning,” Oregon State Barometer, March 24, 1942, 4.

[2] Dr. Eva M. Seen, “Women Begin Fitness Program,” Oregon State Barometer, March 24, 1942, 1.

[3] Rachel Louise Moran, Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 69.

[4] Mark Ellner, “A Critical Look at Women’s Role in Physical Education and Sport in the 1930s,” Educational Considerations 45, no. 2 (2020), 5.

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair’s history.

By Alexandra Collins, Brandon Cunningham, and Maitreya Lake

World War II was a trying time in the United States. Even though the country avoided much of the war’s physical destruction, American military and industrial participation created significant upheaval. Entertainment thus played an important role, offering feelings of comfort and community and lightening the load of challenging times. As we explored the various entertainment options for service members at Camp Adair, we were struck by the prominence of women. Women were essential in organizing events, performing, and participating in social activities. This was not new; women had historically been called upon to serve as morale-boosters for male soldiers, particularly during wartime. This was not different at Camp Adair.

A striking example appeared in the Camp Adair Sentry, the camp’s newspaper, in February 1943. The newspaper announced a visiting performance of a Broadway production called “Junior Miss.” The show’s two headliners, Helen Eastman and Lucille Fetherston, play “two teenage girls who prance through three acts of devastating beauty” in a comedy that provides “hilarious and warm-hearted fun.” The description of the play emphasizes comfort and stability, while the caption beneath a glamorous headshot of actress Ellen Curtis refers to her as a “beauteous blond.”[1] Women often played a key role in performances for soldiers.[2]

Another example, captured a photograph, is the 1943 “Little Colonel” contest (see below).[3] The Oregon State Barometer, which included additional photographs, described a shooting contest among “girls” who were nominated on the basis of “beauty and personality alone.” The top shooters would earn titles using a diminutive form of military ranks, from “Little Colonel” for first place to “Little Second Lieutenant” for fifth, with winners announced at a “‘GI’ Military Ball,” where “Miss ‘Dead-Eye Dick’” would “Rule Over Dance.”[4]

A humorous article from the Barometer in October 1942 highlights the emphasis on women’s appearance, even outside of entertainment venues. In “Pigtails Irksome to Men, Says One With Keen Eye,” Normal Sholseth complained about women students’ hairstyles. “What has happened to those super-glamorous sweeping bobs?” he asked. “Okay, so it does take 15 minutes to put up the mop, but after all look in the mirror and see results.” Sholseth suggests that women’s appearance was important to men, the “fellow [who] rolls out of a warm bunk just to report to an 8 o’clock gym class,” the “harassed manhood of Oregon State.”[5] The article shows that ordinary women, not just entertainers, were being held to particular standards of feminine appearance and seen as a visual source of entertainment.

Women also played a central role in organizing and participating in social activities for Camp Adair’s servicemen. Many women served as “hostesses” with the United Service Organization (USO), creating and staffing recreational spaces and generally providing female company for servicemen far from home. October 1942, the Barometer informed “co-eds who wish to volunteer” in hospitality programs at Camp Adair to fill out an application in the “dean of women’s office for membership in the Corvallis Victory volunteers,” through which they can “indicate interests in Junior Hostess groups, serve as dancing partners for service men at chaperoned dances” or “indicate preferences to serve as hostesses for handicraft, games or other recreational activities at the USO center.” The article also noted that “some evidence of family sanction should be on file in the dean of women’s office, for those girls who plan to accept invitations to officers’ dances at the camp or to volunteer to go to enlisted men’s dances.”[6] The job of hostess was discussed by Barbara Martin in a book of collected memories of Camp Adair. Martin described her experience living near Camp Adair as a young woman and noted that many local girls saw the influx of servicemen as an opportunity to expand their circle of friendships and romantic opportunities. In fact, Martin would end up marrying a serviceman who was stationed at Camp Adair.[7]

The various examples of women as entertainment at Camp Adair point to the different kinds of roles they played. The historian Meghan Winchell argues that the USO’s senior hostesses served as surrogate mothers to soldiers, providing the physical and emotional comforts of home, while the USO “depended upon junior hostesses to use their beauty and sexual appeal to entice men into USO clubs.”[8] Women entertainers were also sexualized, and there was an emphasis on women appearing feminine and attractive to men, another way that women were used to emphasize the masculinity of male servicemembers.[9]

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[1] “‘Junior Miss’ to Be Here Feb. 20,” Camp Adair Sentry, February 11, 1943, 1.

[2] Sherrie Tucker, “‘And, Fellas, They’re American Girls!’: On the Road with the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 16, no. 2/3 (1996): 128-160.

[3] “College women with 1903 Springfield rifles, circa 1943,” Oregon Digital.

[4] “‘Little Colonel’ Candidates Shoot It Out For Honor to Reign Over Military Dance,” Oregon State Barometer, April 30, 1943, 1.

[5] Norman Sholseth, “Pigtails Irksome to Men, Says One With Keen Eye,” Oregon State Barometer, October 24, 1942, 1.

[6] “College Officials Set New Policy For Camp Adair,” Oregon State Barometer, October 23, 1942, 1.

[7] Barbara Martin, “A View of History,” Camp Adair: 50 Years Ago (Dallas, OR: Polk County Museum Association, 1992), 61.

[8] Meghan K. Winchell, “‘To Make the Boys Feel at Home’: USO Senior Hostesses and Gendered Citizenship,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 25, No. 1 (2004), 200.

[9] Marilyn E. Hegarty, Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality During World War II (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010).

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair’s history.

By Maia Merims-Johnson, Gideon Lerner, and Matthew Johnson

Camp Adair was established in 1942 as a training camp during World War II, and its main source of media, the Camp Adair Sentry, launched on March 11, 1942. This military-run newspaper aimed to boost morale and foster communication in the camp. Women were front and center in the Sentry, and their portrayal forces us to reconcile with the paradox of the 1940s media, which presented both empowering and infantilizing depictions of women. The Sentry followed a similar pattern, both reflecting and challenging dominant gender norms. Camp Adair serves as a microcosm of women’s complex place in American society during World War II, as the photography in its newspaper demonstrates.

A photograph in the October 22, 1943 issue of the Sentry provides insight into the complexities of gender in a workplace increasingly occupied by women during the war. It features Wanda McPoil and Alta Williams posed in front of an open-engine service vehicle.[1] The caption, “They Got Mixed in Classification,” implies that there had been a mistake in the women’s work assignment and that the notion of women serving as truck drivers or post engineers was inherently confusing. The caption conjures images of the women in bathing suits – “put a bathing suit on them and you’d swear these two girls should be on the beach at Waikiki” – before minimizing their labor with the comment that “they handle those ton-and-a-halfs as easily as if they were husbands.”[2] The language reflects the skepticism women faced when entering previously male-dominated industries during the war. The photograph is actually unusual for the newspaper in portraying the women wearing pants, flannel, and jackets; a majority of photographs in the Sentry featured women dressed in highly feminized clothing, many of them movie stars and other entertainers. By framing the photograph of women performing skilled manual trades, the reductive and patronizing comments in the caption mark McPoil’s and Williams’ work as unusual. This suggests that women entering these fields continued to face opposition, even if it was quieted by concerns for national defense.

Visual media, a key component of wartime mobilization, clearly struggled to reconcile necessary changes to gender roles brought by the war and the expectations of pre-war gender constructs. As the author Adhis Chetty argued, the need for women’s labor in previously male-dominated jobs led American media provocateurs to challenge gendered expectations of labor that had dominated the national consciousness prior to the war. Propaganda “present[ed] the image of an empowered woman, able to accept responsibility for her life, and in a position to galvanize other women to take action for themselves.”[3] At the same time, unwilling to challenge the prevailing notion of women as subordinate to men, propagandists also emphasized images of women that marked them as unsuited to serious work and independence. The media scholar Steve Dillon argued that in the 1940s, in particular, “male heterosexual desire” was ubiquitous in media, which catered to the male gaze.[4]

The Camp Adair Sentry regularly portrayed women in aggressively gendered ways designed to appeal to male readers. For example, the “Billfold Girl of the Week” feature was specifically designed for the “boys” to ogle. Miss Ruth Kary, the Billfold Girl featured on March 11, 1943, was described as a “charm provider” for test pilots at Boeing Aircraft. The caption also included a Sergeant complaining about not seeing enough of Kary.[5]

This rhetoric of entitlement around portrayals of women’s bodies not only reinforced but amplified the belief among readers at Camp Adair that women existed largely for male entertainment. Indeed, despite the many contributions women made to the functioning of Camp Adair, media portrayals are heavily skewed toward women’s appearance.

A particularly egregious example appeared in June 1942, when the Sentry featured an image of “movie-starlet Dona Drake” in a two-piece bathing suit, photographed from below (Figure 3).[6]

The visual portrayals of women in the Sentry reflect the challenges of wartime, which threatened to transform existing gender roles and power relations. Its seemingly confused and contradictory depiction of women can be understood as part of a larger national campaign designed, in Adhis Chetty’s words, “to persuade women to join the war waged by men and, in doing so, render loyal service to a male-dominated country in a male-dominated war.”[7]

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[1] Claudia D. Goldin, “The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women’s Employment,” The American Economic Review 81, no. 4 (1991): 741-756.

[2] “They Got Mixed in Classification,” Camp Adair Sentry, October 22, 1943, 3.

[3] Adhis Chetty, “Media Images of Women During War: Vehicles of Patriarchy’s Agenda?” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 59 (2004), 36.

[4] Steve Dillon, Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies: Female Desire in 1940s U.S. Culture (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 4.

[5] “Billfold Girl . . . of the Week,” Camp Adair Sentry, March 11, 1943, 9.

[6] “Catch!” Camp Adair Sentry, June 18, 1942, 5.

[7] Chetty, “Media Images of Women During War,” 36.