Long Beach Teachers and War - Part II

In 1942, teachers were involved in numerous wartime services such as being trained in “standard first aid,” distributing the “sugar-rationing cards” to local businesses. Superintendent of Schools, Douglas Newcomb, coordinated the local sugar-rationing program and earned the nickname “Sugar Daddy Newcomb.”

Teachers assisted at the draft board registering young men and raised funds to buy a Red Cross ambulance for Long Beach. They served as Air Raid Wardens and Fire Wardens. They conducted scrap paper drives, with Grant School collecting 40,000 pounds, only to be beaten by Lowell School which collected more than 45,000 pounds.

Long Beach teachers set up “home nursing units” and taught how to make a “victory garden” to grow scarce vegetables. All the schools sold “war stamps” and “war bonds” and raised money to pay for bombers.

Many took second jobs at the aircraft plant and shipyard. Douglas advertised in the Teachers’ Club newsletter, offering jobs during a “Victory Vacation.”

Forty-five teachers and administrators were listed as actively serving in the military by February 1943, including a teacher from Poly named Odie Wright, who served as a Sergeant. When he returned from service he rose through the ranks to become superintendent of Long Beach schools.

Music teachers arranged for Long Beach school bands to play at the Terminal Island Naval Base and the Los Alamitos Naval Base to play “Music for Victory.”

Despite having their salaries frozen at 1933 levels, the Teachers’ Club supported the 5 percent “Victory Tax” that was taken from their monthly income in 1943 to support the war effort.

Long Beach Junior College – which was then part of the K-14 Long Beach City Schools – was one of the few schools which disabled veterans returning from the war could enroll and receive $80 a month in addition to food and housing, while getting an education.

When the war ended, teachers turned their attention to the problem of boys and girls aged 14-17 entering the labor market and leaving school. Even before the war, 600,000 pupils nationally had dropped out of school at the end of 9th grade. Only six out of 10 who entered ninth grade finished high school. Many others did not enter high school at all.

In the summer of 1945, the editor of the Long Beach Teachers’ Journal wrote: “The health and illiteracy defects of American citizens exposed by the war clearly indicate that educational opportunities have not been adequate either in amount or distribution.”

By 1949, Long Beach school enrollment surged to 37,036 and several new schools in north and eastside Long Beach were planned. The Long Beach City Teachers’ Club and Mrs. Elizabeth Hudson, President of the school board invited Miss Mabel Studebaker, President of the National Education Association to speak on how “World Wide Education” should be urged as “war prevention.”

Miss Studebaker had been invited by the British government to study the effect of the war on European schools. “Most wars,” cautioned Miss Studebaker, “begin in the minds of a few men. it must be in the minds of all men that permanent peace is constructed.” She warned that it was the schools of Germany that taught the people to follow leaders like Hitler because “there is not such a thing as freedom of press, freedom of speech or of thought.”

The efforts of Long Beach teachers here at home and abroad should earn them the distinction of being part of the “greatest generation.”

gerrie@beachcomber.news