The Team That Never Came Home

As football season approaches and young men across this nation exchange cloth caps for football helmets, there was a time in our not so distant history that they traded football helmets for military helmets and footballs for weapons. The year was 1941. The football teams from Willamette and San Jose State were to play a series of games with the University of Hawaii called the Shrine Bowl. In the first game of the Shrine Bowl on Dec. 6 Willamette lost a 20-6 contest against the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. The next morning on December 7th, as San Jose State was preparing for their game against Hawaii, Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor. San Jose State football players immediately assumed a more serious role. After the initial attack, the SJS Coach volunteered his players and male supporters for 10 days of guard duty at Punahou School, while the women on the trip were sent to a Navy hospital as nurses’ aides. Most of the Willamette group left Hawaii two weeks after the initial bombing, arriving on the ocean liner President Coolidge in San Francisco bay on Christmas Day. Many players joined the local police force or the armed services and patrolled the docks and towns. Most of the San Jose State players enlisted in the military on the spot and when on to fight in major WW2 battles. Many never returned to the gridiron. The following football seasons of '42 thru '46 were cancelled as the Nation’s resources of manhood were channeled towards a more dire need. Ultimately, 182 of the San Jose State school’s men were Killed in Action during WW2.
To this day, we think about our Team that Never Came Home and wonder about all those gridiron exploits and fantastic plays that never were.
So, when we take the field this Saturday to play your team, I would like to ask your Auburn fans to take a moment to remember the sacrifices that were made during the darkest hour of this great Nation’s historic past, by our young men. And although I cannot say what the final score will be, nor what the outcome, I can assure you that there is no quit in these boys and they will continue to fight until the final whistle.