Fight on! Is a big part of USC as a whole. It’s not just the football program I remember in school it was used in the academics as well. A lot of speeches ended with fight on! It’s part of the USC’s spirit. 1922 is when it started
In 1943, “Fight On!” became legendary outside the university when it inspired U.S. troops to capture an island in the Pacific theater of World War II. As the task force motored ashore to Attu in the Aleutian Islands, music suddenly rang out over the waves. Capt. Hubert D. Long, a USC alumnus, described the scene in a 1944 letter.
“On the deck of our transport our commanding officer had ordered the band to play,” he wrote. “I could hear a cheer in some of the other assault craft, but I could not identify the song until the wind changed. Then I heard, and never again will I ever have such a lump in my throat. Over the waves there came the song that I, that none of us who ever spent our school years at S.C. will ever forget. It was our ‘Fight On’ song. Many, many of us were from California. As all the men heard it, a tremendous roar went up, for here was something tangible. Here was something American to the core, something that pictured to us that for which we fight, and that which we love above all else. We won the island.”