On December 7, 1941, I was sitting in my English classroom at the relatively new Susan Miller Dorsey High. I was sixteen, so picture sixteen in 1941. No TV, no cell phones, and if you dated, you always dressed: stockings, girdles, hair-do and all. Maybe Marilyn Monroe dared to have a little strand of hair out of place….but us? No way. And no pantyhose which meant that the girdles (always tight) held up stockings with those little hooky things which, if you had fat thighs, by the end of the evening left their pattern in the skin. And stockings had seams in the back and you were forever tugging the seams straight. And the guy always brought you a gardenia corsage, which pinned to your dress, got brown and smelly by the end of evening. But there were great bands at the Palladium, and so you bent over your English assignment and dreamed of whether the good looking guy who always copied your answers on tests might actually ask you out. If there was a war in Europe, it hadn’t yet reached Dorsey High.

So on Dec. 7, I sat in my English classroom dreaming when the loudspeaker blared out, “Everyone outside and gather in the “circle!”

The central courtyard was a grassed-in semi-circle from which rooms radiated. It was the heart of the school, a social gathering place and now as we stood nervously, glancing to our solemn teachers, wondering what had happened, we heard over the scratchy loud speaker the rich familiar voice of President Roosevelt. It was a day of infamy. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. We were at war.

It wasn’t until ’42 that the good war movies and the great war heroes emerged. Like Casablanca where the cynical Humphrey Bogart cared only for himself because he had been disappointed in love, but when the critical moment came he sacrificed his love and possibly his life to save the free world. Heroes were not yet made. But we were at war. Patriotic blood stirred, hearts beat faster. This was a good war, a just war. The Nazis were tramping over Europe and now the brave American boys were going in to save the day.

But more immediate, this was L.A. the likely target when the Japanese attacked our west coast. Susan Miller Dorsey High prepared to meet the Japanese invaders.

I think there was a small “ambulance,” it might have been a station wagon but all boys with drivers’ licenses were pressed into service. They had stretchers, and when the bombs fell, they would pick up the wounded and drive them to the gym. Girls of course were to be nurses to tend the wounded. And so we began to train. Some of us practiced lying “wounded” on the grass while our partners were taught to bandage and use splints. I seem to remember that we each had “kits” which contained bandages, aspirin and necessaries for tending bomb victims.

Everyone had a job. Some would be couriers since once the shelling began, we might be locked for who knew how long into our classrooms, and so we trained couriers would stealthily run from room to room, or brave the enemy guns to race to outside bungalows, bringing critical messages, or food if we were trapped there for days as L.A. lay broken and smoking from enemy bombs.

I was at sixteen exceeding silly and jokey. I was majoring in French (we had high school majors in 1941) because I had seen a romantic film with an French actor named Jean Gabin, and for that stupid reason I was learning Tout est bien qui fini bien and how to conjugate the verb avoir. I seem to remember that I was never serious and the only question in my mind was who would marry me and get me out of that West Adams house which had entrapped me. So the only logical job for me was Entertainment Warden and my job, when the Japanese bombed L.A. and we were trapped inside our classrooms, was to go from room to room and cheer everyone up with songs and stories.

I was filled with the spirit, I was willing, I was ready. I might have been a real heroine of WWII.

But the Japanese never came.

By Guest Writer Clare

All Photography from the 1942 Dorsey High yearbook

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