The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2021-2022 School Year, continuing a tradition of excellence in education that began on October 14, 1946.
While a few schools on military bases within the continental United States and its territories were operating prior to World War II, the school system we know today as the Department of Defense Education Activity formally began with the establishment of dependents schools overseas.
Shortly after the end of World War II and the arrival of military families overseas, the Army established a Dependents School Service (DSS) to establish schools for the children of American service members in the occupied countries Germany, Austria and Japan. In the spring of 1946, two Army Majors, Virgil Walker in Germany and Herbert Ingraham in Japan, led the effort. Both officers, experienced educators prior to the war, mobilized to recruit teachers, organize curriculum and develop budgets to support this major logistical effort.
From these humble beginnings, with classrooms in Quonset huts and empty barracks, school operations expanded rapidly. No one could have imagined that those early beginnings would last far longer than the mission of the occupational forces.
Since that foundational year, DoDEA expanded, consolidated and reorganized many times to meet the educational needs of military-connected youth. In 1992, Congress unified the domestic and overseas school operations under the Department of Defense Education Activity.
