World War II brought many changes to Harvard: plastic trays replaced china in the dining halls, and hundreds of WAVES swamped Radcliffe; the Lampoon and the Advocate suspended publication, and the CRIMSON became the Service News; the College was in session all year, and the fervor of a nation at war pervaded the usually staid Cambridge scene. Just as World War II did things for Harvard, however, the University did things for World War II. 25,540 of the almost 100,000 living alumni and students served in the Allied forces and 455 of them never returned. In addition, 654 Faculty and staff members, one-third of the peacetime total, were serving in either military or government capacities as of D-Day.

Many of these people remain on the Faculty today, and a sizeable number of men with war experience have been added since 1945. Some of the functions that these men performed include scientific research, administration, teaching, writing history, and spying. And as Harvard's President, James B. Conant '14 exercised his leadership to a far-reaching extent.

Morison: Naval Historian

Of all the wartime careers of Faculty members, that of Samuel Eliot Morison '08, now Jonathan Trumbull Professor of History, Emeritus, stands out. His work as naval historian of the war earned him the inevitable comparison with Thucydides--and he richly deserves it. It was not long after Pearl Harbor that Morison had the brain wave that resulted in a brilliant 13-volume history of U. S. naval operations. Even before the December 7 disaster he had become a prominent spokesman on maritime affairs. His active pre-war support of President Roosevelt's foreign policy won Time magazine's epithet, "a Boston Brahmin with a brain;" and in April, 1941 his urging that convoys accompany supply ships crossing the Atlantic was but an example of his acute perception of naval problems. When heeded, his plan proved successful in cutting down the high mortality rate of cargo vessels.

His idea of writing a naval history of the war was relayed to F.D.R. by Judge Samuel Rosenman, and then to Secretary of the Navy Knox, who arranged for Morison to receive a commission as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve--provided he passed the physical. With characteristic vigor and energy, Morison started out by himself in May, 1942; by V-J day he had a staff of five officers and three enlisted personnel. He was personally responsible for all that appeared in the history, and though he was commissioned to write it, it was not "official" since neither Morison nor the Navy wanted a mere outline of facts without judgements, an uncritical chronicle or catalogue.

Yachting for the Navy

"Some men enter the Navy through the hawse hole, as enlisted men, but I entered through the cabin window," he related. He set sail first on the Guinevere, a converted yacht on anti-submarine duty off the Atlantic coast; his influence first showed when he persuaded the captain to dock at Maine's Matinicus Island, where the entire crew was feted with a lavish lobster dinner. The historian who had earlier retraced Columbus' path to the New World was off on another, more dangerous mission, applying his philosophy of writing history once more, a philosophy that told him to relive history in order to write it. He borrowed from Ovid to express his method: "Dream dreams, then write them. Aye! But live them, too."

Baptism by Fire

After a spell of convoy duty, he boarded the light cruiser Brooklyn in October, and went to Casablanca where he experienced his baptism by fire. Operation "Torch" was then the greatest amphibious undertaking in history, and Morison was on hand to record it, in all its complexities. The captain praised him after the battle, saying, "By his alert, active, analytical work in recording the events of the action; by his keen fighting spirit . . . ;and by his calm manner he contributed to the general and overall performance of the vessel."

A brief turn at writing in Washington soon ended when in the spring of the following year he set out to the Solomons, where he formed a friendship with Admiral Nimitz. Establishing headquarters in Hawaii, he spent the summer canvassing the combat area of the South Pacific. He survived the Japanese air attack on Guadalcanal and saw even more action on the night of July 12, when his ship engaged in a skirmish as it crossed the "slot" between Guadalcanal and Bougainville. A brief review of Atlantic waters notwithstanding, he stayed in the South Pacific until the end of the year aboard the heavy cruiser Baltimore, which was involved in the capture of the Gilberts. Morison was on the ship when the carrier Liscome Bay, alongside, was torpedoed; he thus saw rescue operations in action.

Action and Writing

Interspersing action with writing, he worked on the first volume about the Atlantic, while assistants covered the fighting at Kwajalein and Eniwetok. Returning to the Pacific to observe the "breaking of the Bismarcks barrier," he sent an assistant to the Mediterranean to report on the landing at Anzio. Still in the spring of '44, Morison took part in the Saipan and Guam landings, as an assistant was on hand for D-Day. Another assistant observed the action in Leyte Gulf.

A third spell in the Atlantic--following up anti-sub action--and then an inspection tour of the French and Italian beach-heads occupied Morison in the winter of '44-'45, and then back to the Pacific. He arrived too late for Iwo Jima but on time to take in the action at Okinawa, on the battleship USS Tennessee. While he was on that ship, a kamikaze pilot provided him with his closest brush with death, narrowly missing him, Admiral Deyo, and Captain Heffernan on the suicidal plunge. After visiting the Phillipines, Morison planned to participate in the long-awaited Kyushu landing in October; the product of other Harvard men--the atomic bomb--ended that.

Enemy Archieves Used

After examining both the Japanese and German naval archives, and armed with a view of the war as a whole, he and his assistants then set out to record what they had seen and learned. In April, 1946, he returned to his Chair in the History Department and wrote the naval history "weekends, holiday, and other days before 0900 and after 1700."