I always had these sandals - and yes, they were called sandals. Anything more open would be called "open-toe sandals", but we weren't allowed to wear these to school, only these Clark's sandals or a Start-Rite Mary-Jane style in the same colour as indoor shoes, and brown lace-ups for outdoors - also in this tan colour,
I do remember the X-ray machine - you could see your own green bones when you looked through the viewer. But the shoe shop we went to after we moved in 1954 didn't have one, and I never saw one again.