Harvard University News Office photographs: Army and Navy activities at Harvard, 1942-1947 (bulk, 1942-1945)

Harvard was profoundly affected by the Second World War. Harvard's President was an early advocate of US involvement in the conflict, Harvard students and teachers left to serve or stayed to conduct war-related research, and Harvard's campus was used for military training.

The day after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan and Harvard University President James B. Conant pledged to mobilize Harvard’s full resources to the war effort. According to Time magazine, Harvard became “Conant’s Arsenal.”

Beginning in 1942, Harvard changed its academic schedule and contracted with the Army and Navy to furnish housing and dining facilities, classrooms, laboratories, and instructors for its Reserve Officers' Training Corps and specialized military training. Harvard expanded its curriculum to include aerial mapping, meteorology, camouflage, military geology, and other subjects of wartime importance. The University largely became a military training facility until the end of the war.

Even in the year before the United States entered World War II, enrollment in ROTC units escalated at Harvard. By May 1942, Army and Naval ROTC cadets numbered 1,600. Shannon Hall and nearby Vanserg Hall formally served as Army ROTC headquarters. Army ROTC included Field Artillery and Quartermaster units under the command of Professor of Military Sciences and Tactics Colonel Henry D. Jay from 1939 to December 1941 and then, briefly, Colonel Philip Hays.

Replacing Colonel Hays in March 1942, Colonel Francis A. Doniat commanded Harvard’s Army ROTC until his transfer to the War Manpower Commission a year later. By late spring of 1943, the Army suspended ROTC and replaced it with the Specialized Training Program and Harvard unified all Army training schools and programs under the command of Doniat’s successor Colonel William S. Wood. The Army Training School at Harvard included the Army Supply Officers Training School, the Army Chaplain School, the Army Air Forces Statistical School, the Army Electronics Training Center, the Army Specialized Training Program, and miscellaneous student groups. When Colonel Wood retired in September 1943, Harvard alumnus Colonel John K. Howard took command of the eight units and more than 2,600 men that made up the Army Training School.

From 1939 to March 1944, Professor of Naval Science and Tactics Captain George N. Barker commanded all Navy personnel and training schools at Harvard, including the Naval Indoctrination and Communication School, the Naval Supply Corps School, the Navy V-12 College Training Program, and Naval ROTC headquartered at Conant Hall. Barker was replaced by Captain Chester H. J. Keppler who served as commanding officer until the end of the war. In July 1943, Harvard enrolled 925 reserve apprentice seamen and NROTC cadets under the Navy V-12 College Training Program, which had been initiated to meet both the immediate and long-range needs for commissioned officers to man ships, fly planes, and command troops during the war.

Throughout World War II, an estimated 45,000 servicemen enrolled in military training schools and programs at Harvard; almost 27,000 Harvard alumni, students, employees, and faculty members served in the armed forces; and 697 died in the war.

The Harvard University News Office was established in 1919. The first photographer was hired in 1943.