Chris Treadway: Regional Oral History Office gets grants for WWII research project

Posted: 07/01/2011 07:20:54 PM PDT
Updated: 07/01/2011 07:24:25 PM PDT

The Regional Oral History Office housed at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has received two U.S. National Park Service grants that will allow it to address an under-examined aspect of the World War II home front.

The grants are specifically directed to expanding documentation of the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II and the ROHO staff is wasting no time in issuing a call for interview subjects.

"We need to reach out to the community to find people willing to be interviewed (or as we call them in the oral history business, 'narrators')," writes Samuel Redman, lead interviewer at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II American Home front Oral History Project. "Ideally, people would pass along names, addresses, and telephone numbers to our email list rtr@lists.berkeley.edu. We will then contact each candidate to discuss their life history before possibly moving forward with an interview."

"The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is an unfortunate part of the story of our nation's journey, but it is a part that needs to be told," said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in announcing the grants.

Two-thirds of the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 were American citizens.