But peace and tranquility are fleeting things. In the '30's rumbles of unrest began to be heard in lovely Southern California. China was invaded by the Japanese, and Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler launched her march through Europe. The armed forces program in the United States was stepped up and new training centers began to appear throughout the country. Air combat was coming into its own and air training installations were being developed at a rapid rate.

Believing that the center of training activities was moving toward the Southwest, and that a location there would be convenient to the bulk of Civil Aviation Schools which it was proposed to use for more advanced training, higher authority on June 16, 1941 recommended that a Cadet Replacement Center be located in the general area of what later became the Santa Ana Army Air Base. The ground selected was known as the Whittier Estate. It was formerly the Berry Rancho, and before that was part of the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, a grant of the Spanish crown to Jose Antonio Yorba in 1810.

The site contained a little over 900 acres, and was ideally located from the standpoint of accessibility and transportation facilities. It had often been considered as the site for a civilian aviation school, and the immediate vicinity was the location of the Glenn Martin plant and experiments in 1911. The ground was flat with few obstructions. Climatic conditions were very favorable for training activities, there being few days of the year on which outdoor work could not be carried on. The ground was leased by the City of Santa Ana which in turn re-leased it to the United States Government for $1.00 a year.

Construction began on October 23, 1941 and continued at intervals for well over two years. Colonel William Abbott Robertson, veteran flyer and experienced organizer, was selected to head the new installation. He set up headquarters in the Federal Building in Santa Ana and plans were laid for the very best in peace time training facilities. Only a few short weeks later- on that historic date, December 7, 1941 -the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we became embroiled in a great struggle to keep our shores free from invaders and preserve our way of life. All. plans were, of course, quite inadequate as originally drawn and activities expanded tremendously. Headquarters moved from Santa Ana to the Base in February, 1942. Some buildings were ready for the cadets, 350 of whom arrived the last week of February, and instruction began early in March.

The training of aviation cadets for aircrew was the primary objective of the new base, and it was therefore named the Air Corps Replacement Training Center. This name was changed to Santa Ana Army Air Base on April 7, 1942. After the first week cadets began to pour in and during the first week in March the officers in charge were told on a Thursday that they were to start school the following Monday with 5,000 cadets. At this time the Aviation Cadet Section was organized and arranged into companies, using the infantry system since a good deal of the ground training was in basic military subjects. In May, 1942 this system was changed into an organization of Wings, Groups, and Squadrons for Air Corps training. Santa Ana Army Air Base became THE pre-flight training center for the Western Flying Training Command. A faculty of more than 250 well-trained and experienced highschool, college, and university teachers, many of whom held advanced academic degrees, was recruited. Thus the base resembled a large civilian university.

I like to think of this as the real beginning of Orange Coast College, for several years later this civilian public college had its beginning on the same ground with the same goal in mind-to train young people to serve their country-this time as happy useful citizens in peacetime pursuits. In fact, some of the same individuals who served the air base became members of the staff when Orange Coast College came into existence. There was Kenneth Boettcher, musician in the SAAAB band, who was the first chairman of the fine and applied arts division of Orange Coast College and who wrote the college's "Alma Mater." Robert Griesser, member of the Orange Coast College social science staff, was on the base as a captain in the Student Mess Section of operation. I too first came to know Southern California through the Santa Ana Army Air Base. As a transplanted midwesterner I served many hours in the base hospital and clinics as a Red Cross nurses' aide while my husband was stationed at this facility as a tack officer in the Pilot School. In fact, my office is located in the building which housed headquarters for his operation.

Others who were members of the staff in the early days at the base and remained to align themselves with education in the vicinity include Miss Evelyn Erickson, RN who holds the position of Coordinator, Education of Physically Handicapped with the Orange County Schools, and Hilmer Lodge and John Arrambide, both of whom are outstanding members of the athletic staff at Mt. San Antonio College in the same Eastern Conference to which Orange Coast College belongs.

In June, 1942 the activities at the base were organized into three major units: (1) the Air Force Classification Center; (2) the Air Force Preflight School (Pilot); and (3) the Air Force Preflight School (Bombardier-Navigator). The Classification Center was responsible for basic indoctrination and military training of cadets, the testing of the potential aircrew trainees, the elimination of the unfit, and the assignment to the appropriate preflight school of those who met the requirements. The courses of instruction in the two preflight schools were essentially the same. They involved military training, physical training, and academic instruction in such subjects as maps and charts, mathematics, Morse code, military courtesy and customs, military hygiene, naval and aircraft identification, organization of the ground forces, physics, and safeguarding military information. An especially interesting development in connection with the training program was a finger dexterity apparatus, subsequently adopted in the military as a testing device.

Other schools and training programs were added later. The Student Officers' School was created in September, 1943 for the preflight training of officers transferred from other branches of the military service to the Air Corps. Under a Lend-Lease arrangement between the United States and the Republic of China, a Chinese Detachment was organized at Santa Ana in September, 1943 to provide English language instruction, general military indoctrination, and preflight aircrew training for Chinese Air Force officers, cadets, and enlisted men. In the same month the primary mission of the base was changed so as to include basic military training of enlisted men in the Army Air Forces as well as aircrew training. In addition to providing medical care for base personnel and their dependents, the station hospital at Santa Ana Army Air Base became a training ground for various types of medical services. They included a graduate training program for medical and surgical residents, a program for nurses of the Army Air Forces, and a branch of the School of Aviation Medicine.

During two and one-half years of intense activity, Santa Ana Army Air Base received approximately 150,000 candidates, excluding Chinese nationals, for aircrew training. Of that number the Classification Center eliminated almost 30,000, most of whom were sent to schools for ground crews and radio operators. The two preflight schools sent approximately 120,000 pilot, bombardier, and navigator trainees to advanced schools. By the end of the summer of 1944 the mission of the AAF Western Flying Training Command was nearing completion and the activities at the Santa Ana Army Air Base were being curtailed. At the same time the recently organized AAF Personal Distribution Command was in need of additional facilities on the West Coast. Effective November 1, 1944, the Santa Ana Army Air Base was transferred to the Personal Distribution Command and the AAF Redistribution Center No. 4 was transferred, without personnel or equipment, from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Santa Ana. Shortly thereafter two other activities of the Personal Distribution Command, an AAF Convalescent Hospital and an AAF Overseas Replacement Depot, were established at the Santa Ana Army Air Base.

With the change of jurisdiction from the Western Flying Training Command to the Personal Distribution Command the mission of the Santa Ana Army Air Base, of course, was changed radically. Until well after the end of World War II, Redistribution Center No. 4 was responsible for the reception of personnel of the Army Air Forces returning as individuals to the United States from overseas duty. Following physical examination and reevaluation during an extensive period of processing, the returnees were assigned to appropriate duty stations, sent to convalescent hospitals in the United States, or separated from the service, as circumstances dictated. Personnel arriving from overseas with specific assignments were processed and forwarded to their appropriate stations. The convalescent hospital at Santa Ana had as its most important function the responsibility for rehabilitating, both physically and emotionally, such Army Air Forces personnel as might be directed to it from any source. It was also committed to offer counsel and guidance to all its patients. Finally it was the function of the Overseas Replacement Depot to receive, equip, prepare, and organize into provisional squadrons, commissioned and enlisted personnel who were received at Santa Ana for shipment overseas.

After the ending of the European conflict and the surrender of the Japanese, the country gradually began to resume its peacetime pursuits and the Santa Ana Army Air Base was inactivated during the early part of 1946.

Looking back upon the wartime activities on this plot of ground, it strikes me that there are numerous parallels between those of then and now. I recall, for instance, that squadrons bivouacked in the hills of the Irvine Ranch where later students of the surveying classes of Orange Coast College did their field-practice surveying. Swimming and lifesaving techniques were practiced in the bay in the general locality where the college now holds its Crew and Sailing activities. Local citizens continue to cooperate in the supplying of housing facilities for faculty and students as they did for military personnel during those war years.

The air base was the pride of the Western Flying Training Command and the setting for more than one military movie. I particularly recall that it was the location for many of the scenes in Winged Victory, which was especially dedicated to the young men of the Air Force and their contribution to the war effort. In like manner, Orange Coast College has been pointed to as a fine example of an institution dedicated to furnishing the best in buildings, equipment and training as a means to higher standards in education. It, too, has drawn television, radio and the press to its campus. Visitors from many countries have come to study buildings and the curriculum, and the techniques of teaching.

One of the most interesting items inherited by the college was the set of murals in the old cadet service club which served for many years as the gymnasium for the college. These two giant murals, 12' x 20' each, covered one wall of the huge building. They featured all sorts of poses of student pilots and many gremlins, those mischievous sprites which were supposed to pester airmen.

Although an occasional student would pose a question as to the meaning and origin of these murals, no real interest was evidenced in them until 1962 when the building was being razed and a new gymnasium being built. At that time the assistance of Ed Ainsworth, columnist for the Los Angeles Times , was sought and through his column the history of the murals was revealed. It seems they were each painted on the canvas material of three window blinds, one week end, to be hung in the new service club which was opened in February, 1943 on the occasion of the birthday of Col. W. A. Robertson, base commander. The artist was Jack Otterson, formerly with a film studio in Hollywood, but then stationed on the base.

The Air Force was contacted, the Pentagon became interested, and the College Board of Trustees voted formally to present the murals to the Air Force. Then began the delicate job of separating the canvas panels from the wall where they had been placed some 20 years ago. Wrecking bars and stepladders came into play. Collective breaths were held-and every canvas panel came from the wall in perfect condition. Under the direction and watchful eye of an Air Force Colonel, the murals were rolled and sent on their way to the UnitedStates Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

So, "operations mural" came to a successful conclusion. A representative of the Air Force stated: "The Air Force would like to get as many things of this kind as possible to depict the unfolding history of our country. These particular murals are genuine folk art and will present to the children and scholars of future generations an idea of the World War It Air Force such as they could get in no other way . . ."

Although reference is made to the "deserted army buildings" which Orange Coast Junior College District inherited when that portion of the old air base was turned over to them by the United States Government, we can look beyond the dilapidated buildings and neglected athletic fields and see the real beginning of the college. Orange Coast College simply continues the high standards set by the occupants of the old base: a fine faculty, attention to the academic pursuits of the students and concern for their health and welfare, serving as an integral part of the community, the state and the nation.

Deserted walks and parade grounds with tumbleweeds piled against the fences have turned into green lawns criss-crossed with paved walks and dotted with shade trees. Uniformed young men marching in military formations have been replaced by alert young men and women hurrying to and from classes or taking part in student activities. Streets formerly identified by numbers and letters now carry colorful names such as "Monitor Boulevard" and "Bounty Way." The cluster of drab grey buildings is fading away. Clean lines of bright red brick, white concrete and glass are the outstanding features of the contemporary and functional college buildings today.

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