January 31, 2012
Veterans History Project
Vietnam Archive Oral History Project
Stories of Service
By Marilyn Pribus
Navy Chief Petty Officer Tom Camarda, a World War II veteran and
volunteer at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., often encounters visitors
wondering about a deceased family member. “Personal histories are the only way
to hand down what happened to our younger people,” he says. “That individual
did not talk to them about the war, so they come here to learn.”
Veterans History Project
Col. Bob Patrick, USA-Ret., is
director of the Veterans History Project (VHP) at the Library of Congress
American Folklife Center, one of many oral history projects across the country
that preserve these stories.
“Collecting and preserving
veterans’ stories tells the human experience of war,” Patrick says. “It’s not
about what the generals and historians and scholars have said but [rather] about
the individual experience.”
The VHP is the nation’s largest veterans’ oral history project, charged
by Congress in 2000 with chronicling veterans from World War I to today. A “collection”
is created for each participating individual (living or deceased) and may
include interviews, letters, diaries, photos, drawings,
scrapbooks, and similar items. It has more than 65,000 collections with
about 10 percent available on the Internet.
“We’ll never have everything
online,” Patrick admits. “But the public can experience a cross section of the
stories.”
For example, the online collection about
Cmdr. Darlene Iskra, USN-Ret., of College Park, Md., includes video and audio
interviews and photos. “The project is important because otherwise the stories
would be lost forever,” Iskra says. “I wish I had interviewed my dad about his
experiences during World War II. Now, he’s gone, and my siblings and I will never
know what he went through.”
Vietnam Archive Oral History Project
Other veterans’ oral history projects deal with specific populations, such
as women, Latinos, or a particular era. One such specialized collection is the Vietnam
Archive Oral History Project at Texas Tech University at Lubbock, which takes a
scholarly approach to preserving military and civilian experiences in Southeast
Asia.
“These recollections are extremely
important and aren’t chronicled anywhere else,” says Dr. Steve Maxner, who
launched the Vietnam Archive Oral History Project in 1999. “Our virtual archive
is considered by researchers to be the definitive archival resource on the
Vietnam War,” Maxner says. “It’s great for scholars now and will still be in 100
years.”
To date, the project contains 20
million pages of archived material, with more than 3 million pages online that
include interviews — mostly conducted by a full-time staff of trained
historians — with people not only from the U.S. but also from the U.K.,
Australia, and Vietnam.
One of Maxner’s own interviews, for
example, dates from 2003 when he spoke seven times by phone with Maj. Bill
Paris, USA-Ret. They discussed Paris’ service in Korea as well as in Vietnam.
“The interviews were difficult for
me but vital if people are to understand what going to war really means,” says
Paris. “It is worth it if it helps others understand that wars end on paper but
stay in the minds of the participants until death gives us true peace at last.”
Stories of Service
Another project with a very
different approach is Stories of Service, which operates nationwide. It encourages
young people to create three- to five-minute videos about veterans. The website
offers a curriculum relating to the project with a free educator’s guide and a
digital story toolkit.
Camarda is the subject of such a
video by Steve Shade, a high school student when he created the video. “We
gather information,” says Shade, who is the son of an Air Force veteran. “Then we
write a script, and when the veteran approves it, he reads it as we record.” Personal
photos and video clips are typically part of the final video.
“It feels like you are honoring the person by sharing the story,” Shade
says. “Can I tell you about Tom?” he continues. “He and five friends enlisted
right after Pearl Harbor.” He tells about Camarda’s service as a Navy gunner on
Texaco’s tanker SS Virginia, which
was in a convoy set upon by a German submarine wolf pack in 1943.
Camarda takes over the story. “I
was on watch at 2 a.m. and saw an ammo ship right in front of us just blow up in
a humongous ball of fire,” Camarda says. “It started raining debris on us —
clothes and letters and pieces of the bulkhead. There was nothing left of the
ship. Nothing.”
What can people learn from these oral histories? “There’s a big lesson
for everybody about what we went through,” says Camarda. “We were on the brink
back then. Young men even lied about their age to get with the program. People
will know this was not easy.”
“There are 17 million living
wartime veterans,” says Patrick, “but we are losing thousands every year.” If you have tales to tell or a friend or
family member you want commemorated, investigate how you can accomplish this. There
is no time like today to start.
Copyright Marilyn Pribus and Military Officers Association of America. All rights reserved.