American war veterans, including members of Congress, journalists and a historian, have joined a national effort led by the Library to capture and preserve the personal histories of some 19 million veterans and, through these stories, to connect younger and future generations of Americans with their nation's wartime history.
Dr. Billington announced a 26-member advisory body, the Five-Star Council, and introduced several members who came to the Library on Nov. 8 to offer their support and guidance to the Veterans History Project, which the Library's American Folklife Center launched one year ago on Veterans Day.
Council members met with the Librarian and Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, director of the Veterans History Project, that morning and then joined them for a program in the Members' Room of the Jefferson Building, where AARP, a national organization for people 50 and older, announced it will give $3 million to the Veterans History Project.
AARP President Esther "Tess" Canja not only pledged $1 million a year for three years to the project but also promised that AARP will marshal its 35 million members to find veterans whose stories have yet to be recorded and to "create a well-trained volunteer force to conduct proper oral history interviews with their parents, friends and even strangers."
Ms. McCulloch-Lovell said the project also is being supported by 108 "official partners," including veterans and military organizations, libraries and archives, museums, oral history programs, universities and civic organizations. These organizations have agreed to endorse the project, recruit their members as interviewers and serve as repositories for some of the material.
Dr. Billington said the Library has embraced the project and its mission to collect the memories, accounts and documents of war veterans and those on the homefront who supported them. "Especially now, at a time when our nation is once again challenged, we have much to learn from those who served," he said.
This collection of recorded oral histories, diaries, letters, maps and photographs will be preserved at the Library, he said.
At the first meeting of the Five-Star Council, Dr. Billington asked for members' ideas. Two seasoned veterans on the council encouraged the participation of young people in the project.
"What better way to connect them with their history than to have seniors in schools throughout the country go out into their communities to interview veterans?" asked Julius W. Becton, a retired lieutenant general with 40 years of service in the U.S. Army, including duty in Germany, France and the Pacific during World War II and in Korea and Vietnam.
Mr. Becton also emphasized that the Veterans History Project "must collect all their stories"—those of African Americans, Japanese Americans, Native Americans and women in uniform and on the homefront.
Lee A. Archer Jr., who entered flight training at the Tuskegee Army Air Field and became a fighter "ace" and a lieutenant colonel with 29 years of service with the Air Force, agreed. "The project must be all-inclusive," he said.
Retired Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm joined the military in 1942 as a truck driver, served in the Army and then the Air Force for 33 years, and retired in 1975 with the highest rank of any woman in the armed services. She emphasized that the project should include women and men in all kinds of noncombat jobs—truck drivers, mechanics, clerks, typists, technicians of all kinds, and recently, those who flew tankers that refuel jets over the Persian Gulf and now over Afghanistan.
"It's difficult to get people to come forward if they feel what they did was not significant," she said after the program. "A lot of outreach needs to be done."
Although the Veterans History Project legislation targets veterans of five wars—World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf—Ms. Holm said the project should include those in uniform who served in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and now Afghanistan. "If that's not war, it's pretty darned close," she said.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi, a combat-decorated Vietnam veteran, said his department can reach millions of veterans, including those in VA hospitals (some 60,000 on any given day) and clinics ("4 million vets come to us for care in a year").
Speaking also during the public program, Mr. Principi endorsed the project and pledged his department's support. "I look forward to dedicating the resources of my department" to the project, he said. "Every community in America with a veterans organization or military organization will gather up their stories and their lessons, and we will preserve them for all time."
Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) co-sponsored the legislation that created the Veterans History Project. - James Hardin
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a World War II pilot in the China-Burma-India theater who received two Distinguished Flying Crosses and other medals, recalled receiving and reading the diary of a friend who had driven a troop carrier onto Omaha Beach. "Sixty percent of our World War II veterans are gone, but their widows and families have their diaries and letters. We ought to get those materials," he said.
Several council members, including members of Congress, spoke about the project's importance during the presentation that followed.
Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) together sponsored the bipartisan legislation that President Clinton signed into law on Oct. 27, 2000 (Public Law 106-380), to authorize the Veterans History Project. Rep. Kind, principal author of the legislation, said he was inspired three years ago upon hearing for the first time the personal stories of his father, a Korean War veteran, and his uncle, a World War II veteran. "They started talking about their experiences, what they went through, what they saw, what they were involved in," he recalled. He grabbed the family video camera and began recording these stories for his children before the history was lost with the passing of his father's generation.
"We are losing 1,500 veterans a day, so we are racing against time to preserve this important part of U.S. history, not to glorify war, but rather to capture the reality of the experiences that our veterans and families on the homefront had," Rep. Kind said.
"I can't think of any greater tribute to our veterans than the preservation of their memories and the formal collection of this history at a place such as the Library of Congress," he said.
Sen. Hagel, who co-sponsored the legislation in the Senate, is a Vietnam combat veteran and former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. He said, "In the hands of the nation's young rest the nation's destiny. This project is so important for that reason alone, to connect [our history with] our young people, the next generation, the generation that will inherit the challenges of our day."
Chief congressional sponsors of the legislation, along with Sen. Hagel and Rep. Kind, were Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), an Army captain who lost both legs and his right arm in a grenade explosion in Vietnam in 1969; and Reps. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.), a Marine veteran, and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). All are members of the Five-Star Council.
Another Veterans History Project supporter and council member is Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who underscored the importance of linking young people to their history. Sen. Inouye was a 17-year-old Red Cross volunteer in Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Ten years ago, as the nation prepared to observe the 50th anniversary of that day, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would "live in infamy," less than half of high school seniors polled knew the significance of the date, Sen. Inouye said.
"It has been said by wise philosophers that a nation that forgets its past, or disregards its past, is destined for oblivion," Sen. Inouye said. "If we maintain this attitude about history, forgetting the past, then we are in deep trouble."
After Pearl Harbor, Sen. Inouye served with the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team—service that cost him a limb and earned him the congressional Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart with cluster and 12 other medals.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), another Five-Star Council member, said he had been in the Jefferson Building many times during the 23 years he has served in the U.S. Senate, but no day had been or would be more important than this one promoting the Veterans History Project. "Jim Billington, I cannot think of any charge given you by the Congress that takes greater significance than this one," he told the Librarian.
He reminisced about the military service of his father, "a brilliant surgeon who served in the trenches of World War I and cared for wounded by the hundreds," and the Red Cross service of his mother. After he returned home, wounded and decorated, his father explained to his young son why he had custody of a German officer's Luger pistol: "'I saved the lives of all those in uniform; that was my mission as a doctor.'"
"If only I had my father's memoirs," Sen. Warner said.
Looking back over his long career of public service that included Pentagon duty as under secretary and secretary of the Navy (1969-1974) during the Vietnam era, Sen. Warner said histories of decisions made then should be saved to assist a nation facing a "conflict of complexities of never before, in terms of geography, in terms of political and military relationships."
Putting U.S. war casualties from one helicopter crash in Afghanistan into historical perspective, Sen. Warner noted that more than 500,000 Americans gave their lives in World Wars I and II, some 37,000 died in Korea and another 58,000 died in Vietnam. "Those numbers are incomprehensible to this generation, unless you preserve this fascinating history to guide this nation in the future," he said.
Although acts of courage, heroism and sacrifice are important to record for posterity, another story to be told is how World War II united Americans from all walks of life, said another Five-Star Council member, Sam M. Gibbons, who served in the House of Representatives for 34 years. "World War II was a great builder of America, a great homogenizer of America," he said.
Noting that 12.5 million Americans served in the armed forces and about the same number served on the industrial side, Mr. Gibbons said people did their duty, not because they were asked to perform a patriotic act, "but because you thought it was the thing to do. You worked with people, and you learned with them the real principles of brotherhood—what it is to work and to train together and to perform missions together and what it is to follow the leadership," said Mr. Gibbons.
He began his World War II service in 1941 as an infantry officer with the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. As part of the 101st Airborne Division, he led parachute infantry forces in the pre-dawn invasion of Normandy, France, the allied invasion of the Netherlands, the Battle of the Bulge, the defense of Bastogne and in central Europe. He earned the Bronze Star and rank of major.
"Spilling our guts, as we're going to do in the project, and telling the truth about what happened, is a lesson for America," he said.
Deputy Librarian Donald L. Scott, introduced as "the Library's very own general," described briefly his military service, through which he rose to the rank of brigadier general. He said those who serve "do more than serve the stated purpose of the war, but we actually experience and carry with us the democratic ideals of America.
"I actually benefited, from having been an African American born and raised in a segregated society, the opportunity to be integrated by and to integrate the United States Army," he said. In all his experience, he said, he never met one American, regardless of his or her ethnic background, who came to the war with the idea of being a hero, but of "wanting to do what's right," of choking back fear when the shooting started and stepping forward to lead when called upon.
