Colloquium Talk

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Telling War Stories: The World War II Heritage Internship The Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home

Transcript of Colloquium Talk

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Telling War Stories: The World War II Heritage InternshipThe Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home

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Introduction• The World War II Heritage

Internship is a program sponsored by the Eisenhower Foundation.

• Audiovisual work• Oral history interviews• Army unit records

• Along with conducting archival work, the internship assisted with special events and workshops held at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Eisenhower Presidential Portrait

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Duties• The main duties of the internship included

accessioning, writing descriptions, and cataloging oral history interviews from World War II veterans and those who participated in home front activities.

• Army Unit Record photographs were also accessioned, described, and cataloged into existing collections. These collections consisted military divisions and regiments who served in both the European and Pacific theaters of war.

• Finding aids were drafted for both interviews and pictures.

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Oral History Interviews• The project was conducted by Joe

Todd, an oral historian from the Oklahoma State Historical Society.

• The interviewees of various backgrounds during WWII:• Army, Navy, Army Air Corps, Marine

Corps. • Non-military participants were

interviewed also:• Home front activities• Defense jobs

• Approximately 80 interviews were accessioned, described, and cataloged into the Eisenhower Library collection.

• The interviews weren’t limited to US citizens. Japanese and German participants were interviewed also.

Eisenhower Statue

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• Sample interviews:

• Airstrip construction by US Navy Seabees

• Okinawa native witnessing US landings

• Wehrmacht soldier attending Munich Nazi Party Rally

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Work desk set-up

Materials involved with interview-CD-8mm tape-Release form-Interview transcript

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Listening to the O’Brien oral history interview

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• Importance of interviews: this grassroots approach to researching WWII history revealed the different experiences that people had during the war and explains how and why they became involved. They augment the historical narrative with their first-hand account of the events. There can be some information in oral history interviews that may not be on any written record and so the interviews are important contributions.

• This was a chance to tell their stories and now future researchers can use these interviews to learn about the personal experiences that veterans had during WWII.

Audiovisual Office, EPL

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Army Unit Record Photographs• Another internship duty consisted of accessioning

and cataloging photographs. These are photographs taken by army divisions or regiments, usually by the Signal Corps, and produced a visual record of the unit’s activities. These are pictorial records of army unit activities.

• Army Units with photographs:• 161st Infantry Regiment • 378th Infantry Regiment• 99th Infantry Division• 146th Combat Engineers• 83rd Infantry Division• 5th Armored Division• 4th Armored Division

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D-Day +70 Year Anniversary• On June 6th and 7th, the Eisenhower Presidential

Library and Museum hosted a series of D-Day anniversary events.

• The anniversary brought in not just US veterans, but international delegates from Britain, Germany, Poland, and Japan.

• These events consisted of the following:• Remembrance Ceremony• WWII Re-enactors• Exhibit Galley talks• ‘Life as a Ritchie Boy’ documentary and presentation by

Dr. Guy Stern, a Ritchie boy in Germany• WWII vehicles• 1st Division Concert and Symphony Orchestra Concert• Questions with WWII veterans

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Re-enactor with World War II Research Center, El Dorado, KS

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Remembrance Ceremony: 1st Division soldiers in WWII uniform

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Remembrance Ceremony: Director Carl Weissenbach speaking

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WWII Re-enactors from Fort Riley

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Eisenhower re-enactor from Fort Riley

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Re-enactors in front of armored half-track

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Invited guests with honor guard, Dr. Guy Stern third from right

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Review of Internship

• Overall, the internship was a wholesome, positive experience that provided not just archival training , but it showed the intricacies that are involved with archival research and processing.

• The internship also introduces one to the archival procedures used by the NARA.

• Presidential Libraries are important both on the federal and local level because they are sponsors of local education and community organizations; they are excellent at public outreach.

• This internship is excellent entry-level work for students studying US history and archival science.

Photo courtesy of EPL; ‘Monuments Men’ General Dwight D. Eisenhower inspects art treasures looted by the Germans and stored in the depths of a salt mine in Germany along with gold, silver, and paper currency. The mine was captured by U.S. Third Army troops. (66-78)

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