Veterans History Project

Key components of Library of Congress Veterans’ History Project
(http://www.loc.gov/vets/)

Overview The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.

Experiencing War – Focusing on different themes related to wars and veterans, this feature changing regularly, with a list of all previous themes linked at the bottom. Current theme: Submarines: the Silent Service.

How to Participate -  Read how to contribute; field kit is available online to download. This section has information specifically for teachers and students, who have already contributed significantly to  the Veterans History Project.

The Content: Veteran stories and artifacts – search or browse to find catalog of all items and view/listen to those that are digitized.

Selected American Memory Collections:
[be sure to  see Collection Connection for each]

After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor  This collection contains twelve hours of individual opinions recorded after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

September 11, 2001, Documentary Project This collection documents eyewitness accounts, expressions of grief and other commentary on the events of September 11, 2001. Included in this presentation are photographs, drawings, audio and video interviews and written narratives.

Suffering Under a Great Injustice: Ansel Adams Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar In this collection, Ansel Adams documents the life of Japanese Americans interned at the Manzanar relocation camps during World War II. Photographs include portraits, views of daily life, agricultural scenes and sports and leisure activities.

World War II Military Situation Maps - View maps showing troop positions beginning on June 6, 1944 to July 26, 1945.

Teacher Resources:

Primary Source Sets

Veterans’ Stories: The Veterans History Project - The personal stories of American war veterans and civilian workers who supported them, as recorded in interviews, diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings.

Veterans' Stories: Struggles for Participation - Women and people of color have often had to overcome obstacles in order to participate fully in the U.S. armed forces. Veterans tell their stories through interviews, memoirs, and photographs.

Other Resources:

From the Homefront and the Front Lines (Exhibition) This exhibition consists of original materials and oral histories drawn from the Veterans History Project collections at the Library of Congress.

 World War Two Presentation World War II highlights from the American Memory Timeline feature  Offers perspectives on The Art of War, Citizen Contributions to the War Effort, Japanese American Internment, Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt to J. Robert Oppenheimer, General George S. Patton, Diary Entry,  Women Defense Workers.

Lesson Plans

Nothing to Fear (Grades 5-8) Students learn what the World War II experience was like for Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

What are We Fighting for Over There? (Grades 10-12) Students create World War I era newspapers with different perspectives on American involvement in the war.

Three dealing with photography and its role in the war:

Mathew Brady Bunch (Grades 6-12) Students become reporters, analyzing a Civil War photograph, and writing a newspaper article based on their chosen photograph.

Photojournalism (Grades 5-8) Students explore how and why war has been photographed and also see the bias within the recording/reporting of war.

What Do You See? (Grades 5-12) Students analyze Civil War photographs, and develop links between the Civil War and American industrialization.

See also this presentation:

Does the Camera Ever Lie -  Compare two photographs from Alexander Gardner's 1865 Sketch Book of the War and see how he rearranged the visual elements in his photographs to influence the viewer.

Newspaper Articles

See Chronicling America, which covers the years 1880-1922 (1860-1879 to be added soon)

Search on terms from World War I such as doughboy, trenches, armies, arms, campaigns, battles, military battleships, soldiers, war songs, war posters.  Remember that not until World War II (beyond the dates of these newspapers) was the Great War known as World War I. They didn’t know there would be a WWII.