|
Featured Resource: Oral Histories
of Pearl Harbor and 9/11
Miglena Daradanova
On September 12, 2001 the New York Times wrote: “This
was Pearl Harbor redux without the face of an enemy.”
Most major American newspapers recounted the horror of the
World Trade Center attacks by comparing them to the events
of 60 years before, whether because the day of infamy was
still fresh in American memory or because of the obvious parallels
between the two events.
 |
 |
The Library of Congress online collections offer materials
related to both attacks. Two of its online collections are
presented here: Pearl
Harbor and Public Reactions
and September
11, 2001, and Public Reactions. They are united by
some common characteristics. Both collections were started
in the wakes of violent attacks on the United States, 60 years
removed in time. Both events were considered treacherous violations
of the rules of war and peace and involved suicidal attackers.
And finally, the two collections explore the reactions of
common people to both the attacks and American international
policy.
Pearl Harbor and Public Reactions is a collection
of audio interviews gathered in the days after December 7,
1941. The Library
of Congress’ Radio Research Project had fieldworkers
around the country who immediately started collecting interviews
about the bombing. The collection consists of two parts: After
the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews
Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, including over
200 interviews taken between December 8-10, 1941 and Dear
Mr. President, including over seven and a half hours
of digitized and transcribed recordings taken in January and
February 1942 that were also used to create a radio program,
entitled "Dear Mr. President," which was broadcast
in May 1942. The interviews in the Dear Mr. President
compilation are with ordinary people who were asked to address
in epistolary form their thoughts and opinions on the attack
and the declaration of war directly to President Franklin
D. Roosevelt. The collection can be accessed through the Library
of Congress’ American Memory archive, in the “War,
Military” section.
The interviews
reflect the varied concerns of people at the time, from how
to respond to the attack to their attitudes toward Roosevelt’s
foreign policy. Some people show resolve to fight; others
insist on staying isolationist. They are aware that the recordings
will be aired on the radio and use the opportunity to address
the nation, their fellow townsmen, or the president in person.
This awareness creates an intersection of politics, public
opinion and media that can provide interesting insights into
how people react to watershed political events. To listen
to interviews taken in Bloomington, Indiana on December 10,
1941, click here.
 |
The graphic
items presented by the collection are miscellaneous:
children’s drawings, church marquees, posters, pictures
of memorials across the country. The audio
and video
interviews, and written
narratives are similarly very diverse in the cultural
and social background of their authors. The materials
were received from 27 states and a U.S. military base
in Naples, Italy. While some of the interviews are with
witnesses of the attacks, most are with people from other
parts of the country who “witnessed” the event
on television.
As with Pearl Harbor, the media play an important role
in the events, this time by making them almost tangible
to every American by providing a single unifying vision
of the attacks. |
| The images of the towers,
the firefighters, even the initial brightness of the
September day often are echoed in the children’s
drawings. The black and white photos of the collection
evoke further allusions to 1941 and introduce the rhetoric
of war that closely followed September 11.
|
The two collections can be used contingently or on
their own for research on the meanings of the events
in American memory. They provide rich data that speaks
about the common person’s sense-making in times
of crisis and the continuity of beliefs and values in
America.
|
|
