[2][4] The game returned to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena after being played in North Carolina at Duke Stadium in Durham the year before.
Charley Trippi of Georgia was named the Player of the Game when the award was created in 1953 and selections were made retroactively.
[5] After the 1942 Allied victory in the Battle of Midway and the end of the Japanese offensives in the Pacific Theater during 1942, it was deemed that the West Coast was no longer vulnerable to attack, and the Rose Bowl game returned to southern California.
[11] Due to the number of American servicemen stationed in Australia, the game was broadcast live on Australian radio.
The Bulldogs had been named national champions by the Berryman, DeVold, Houlgate, Litkenhous, Poling, and Williamson polls.
UCLA fans Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner rented the Cocoanut Grove Ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel for a party for the Bruins football team.
[27] Charley Trippi of Georgia was named the Rose Bowl Player of the Game when the award was created in 1953 and selections were made retroactively.
[5] Lynn "Buck" Compton, who played for UCLA, and started at guard in the game, later earned a Silver Star for his meritorious action at Brécourt Manor.
According to Lynn "Buck" Compton(See "Call of Duty" by Lt. Lynn Buck Compton, Life, before, during, and after the "Band of Brothers), shortly after the game, the entire Senior Class of those players, who were also in ROTC, were taken into the military, prior to graduation and sent to Officer Candidate School.
[30] During World War II, UCLA left end Milt "Snuffy" Smith was critically injured when his crew was struck by a missile.
When he was about to be declared a hopeless case and to be abandoned, a medic saw his "Rose Bowl, 1943" engraved wrist watch he was wearing and shouted, "This is one guy we’ve got to save."