Saturday, December 13, 2008
Veterans of World War II Remembered on Pearl Harbor Day
Sunday was the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and I found a few articles on survivors of the attack in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and online. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, there are less than 5,000 current members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. At its peak, there were 20,000 members of the Association. As of Sept. 30, 2008, there were 2.6 million World War II veterans. Those veterans are dying at the average rate of 851 each day, with 310,777 expected to die by September 30, 2009.
Therefore, it is important to capture the stories of those WWII veterans still living. The Library of Congress is conducting the Veterans History Project and seeks interviews, photographs, correspondence and other objects related to veterans. The website can be found at:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/about.html and contains tips on conducting interviews of veterans to collect their first-hand account of their service. Here is a link to the Biographical Data form required by the Project:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/pdf/biodata-fieldkit-2007.pdf. Here is a link to suggested questions to ask the veteran:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/vetquestions.html.
You may also learn about how to conduct an oral interview with your loved one at StoryCorps. http://www.nationaldayoflistening.org/