Sunday, October 21, 2007
The biggest batch of
veterans served in World War II.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO — Manuel Perez, 82, remembers his experiences in World War II in surprising detail — the times his tank got hit by enemy fire, the night he slept between his buddies to fend off the cold, the names of the towns he passed through in Europe in pursuit of the Germans.
Those razor-sharp memories are exactly the kind the Library of Congress hopes to preserve before the last veteran from his generation is buried. Since 2000, volunteers working with the library’s American Folklife Center have collected more than 50,000 taped interviews as part of the Veterans History Project.
But time is running out: Between 1,000 and 1,500 World War II veterans are dying every day, according to estimates at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Of the estimated 17 million U.S. veterans still living, about 2.9 million served in World War II.
Unless volunteers hurry to interview others who fought in World War II, participants in the project worry that servicemen such as Perez will slip away without leaving their memories for posterity.
Project officials hope documentaries such as Ken Burns’ recent “The War,” which highlights the sacrifices of military personnel during World War II, will spur viewers to action. But the goal is daunting.
“I don’t anticipate we will be able to capture all of them,” said Bob Patrick, director of the project. “But we want to get a good sampling from all the wars to create a meaningful and useful collection.”
“There is a sense of urgency,” said Joe Popovitch, a research librarian at Indian Prairie Public Library in Darien, Ill., and a volunteer who has compiled about 60 interviews. “Anyone can do it. Anyone can volunteer to do an interview and send material to the Library of Congress. The more people, the better.”
Already, the catalog is the largest compilation of oral history in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world, Library of Congress officials said.
The biggest chunk of the interviewees — some 21,000 — served in World War II. Smaller numbers fought in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and a relative handful saw action in World War I.
The Veterans History Project differs from other efforts to chronicle wars both in terms of its breadth and its grass-roots appeal, library officials said.
The National World War II Memorial registry, for instance, logs the names of people who contributed to the war effort. But the Library of Congress’ project is more far-reaching: It seeks to log not only names, but also audio and video recordings of the veterans as well as diaries, letters and other memorabilia, project officials said.
Transcripts of the veterans’ accounts can be found on the project’s Web site — www.loc.gov/vets — and they prove to be fascinating reading: Last week, for instance, Popovitch interviewed a female pilot who ferried servicemen and flew with a practice target tied to her plane during World War II.
Some of the more harrowing accounts come from prisoners of war.
Ernest Thorp, a farmer near Clinton, Ill., was captured by the Germans after he and nine other pilots with the 8th Air Force, 452nd Bomb Group ejected from a burning B17 bomber flying over the North Sea. He was swimming in the icy waters when a German fisherman cut his life jacket and pulled him to safety.
“He could have stabbed me right there. But he didn’t. He saved my life,” said Thorp, whose diary he kept throughout the war is part of the project archives. “He had been a POW [captured] by the English in World War I. He said, ‘I was treated all right. I’ll treat you all right.’ When he docked [his fishing boat], there were six German guards right there. They took me prisoner.”
Perez said he wants to have his story preserved.
“It lets people know that there were a lot of people who gave in service to their country,” Perez said.