DOING ORAL HISTORY
DUDLEY OBSERVATORY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT


DEFINING ORAL HISTORY:
There are many definitions of oral history, some with great detail and nuance, but perhaps the simplest is that oral history is the systematic collect and preservation of living people's testimony about their own experiences.

 

ORAL HISTORY WEB SITES:
These are just a few of the well known and very informative Web sites that demonstrate what we can learn from oral history.

Making Sense of Oral History by Linda Shopes, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral provides an excellent overview of just what oral history is, how to conduct oral histories, and how to use and interpret oral histories in a larger historical context.

Another useful guide can be found at http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html.

The Libary of Congress http://www.loc.gov has dozens of collections that feature oral history resources, including American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem as well as the offerings of the American Folklife Center, http://www.loc.gov/folklife, which include The Veteran's History Project, with an extensive oral history component; Story Corps, a national project to capture and preserve the voices and stories of a wide cross section of Americans, http://storycorps.net http://storycorps.net; and SAVE OUR SOUNDS, http://www.loc.gov/folklife/sos , a project to preserve our audio heritage, both oral and aural.

Two of the earliest oral history projects on the Web, What did you do in the War, Grandma? http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/tocCS.html and The Whole World Was Watching: an oral history of 1968 were done by high school students in conjunction with Brown University. The work of these students continues to serve as a valuable historical research tool.

A history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a major event in US labor history, including audio recollections from some who were there in 1911http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire

. The fire killed 141 people -- more than 125 were young women factory workers. The American Century Project, another student project http://www.doingoralhistory.org/index.html looks at a wide range of topics in the twentieth century.

It is important to remember that not all oral histories are available on the Internet. In many cases you will only find guides to the collections. One example is are the oral history projects on space, science and technology done by the National Air and Space Museum, http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/ohp-introduction.html.

 

TALKING HISTORY:
Selections from , weekly radio program aired on Thursday mornings on WRPI, Troy, at 10 AM and archived on the TALKING HISTORY Web site, http://www.talkinghistory.org.

August 10, 2006
Segment 1: "From the Archives: The Atomic Bombers (WBAI, 1962)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 26:46.
Pacifica's From the Vault brings us a long selection of WBAI's 1962 program, "The Atomic Bombers," focusing on crew members who participated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Segment 2: From the Archives: "Enrico Fermi on Chicago Pile 1." (1952)
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:38.
This is a selection from Enrico Fermi's comments at the tenth anniversary celebration of the birth of the Manhattan Project and the first nuclear chain reaction, held at the University of Chicago. Recorded by the Atomic Energy Commission on December 2, 1952, Fermi reviews the operation of the first controlled fission reactor, known as "Chicago Pile 1," which was successfully tested on December 2, 1942. The reactor was constructed at the University of Chicago by a team under the leadership of Enrico Fermi. Originally planned to be built at a laboratory in the Argonne forest preserve (around 30 miles west of Chicago), a labor strike soon forced the project to be moved to a racquets court under the abandoned west stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. For more details on the construction of that reactor, see Fermi's 1946 account in "The Development of the first chain reaction pile," Proceedings of the American Philosophy Society 90: 20-24. For more information about Fermi and the Manhattan Project, see: http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/fermi.html, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1938/fermi-bio.html, and http://physics.uchicago.edu/fermi.html. For more information about this particular recording, contact Talking History/University at Albany, or the National Archives' Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division, College Park, MD.

Segment 3: "Atomic Veterans: Oral Histories, Part 1."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 19:52
This is an edited selection from an interview with Robert W. D. Ball conducted on November 19, 2004 by former University at Albany graduate student Toshi Higuchi as part of his final project for "Readings and Practicum in Oral History," [http://www.albany.edu/history/oralhistory/] an oral history course taught by Prof. Gerald Zahavi. Higuchi conducted five interviews with atomic veterans for the project, and we will be airing more excerpts from his other interviews next month. This selection was edited by Zahavi. For a related project by Higuchi, a documentary titled "Embracing the Bomb," see our Dec. 30, 2004 broadcast.

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September 21, 2006
Segment 1: "Atomic Veterans series, Part 2: Toshi Higuchi interview of Ronald Benoit." (10-31-2004) [See 8-10-2006 broadcast for part 1]
Real Media. MP3. Time: 13:14.
This is an edited selection from an interview with Robert Benoit conducted on October 31, 2004 by former University at Albany graduate student Toshi Higuchi as part of his final project for "Readings and Practicum in Oral History," [http://www.albany.edu/history/oralhistory/] an oral history course taught by Prof. Gerald Zahavi. Higuchi conducted five interviews with atomic veterans for the project. This selection was edited by Zahavi. For a related project by Higuchi, a documentary titled "Embracing the Bomb," see our Dec. 30, 2004 broadcast.

Segment 2: "Gerald Zahavi interview of Roger Ray ~ Castle Bravo." (May 2004).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 14:37.
This is a selection from an extended interview conducted by Gerald Zahavi with Roger Ray. Between 1948 and 1958, the U.S. tested 66 nuclear devices in the Marshall Islands -- in the Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Ray played a key role in supervising many aspects of the latter series of tests, and later in attempts to clean up Enewetak Atoll and repatriate the Enewetakese (they had been relocated to a distant atoll before the tests began). In this segment, Ray recalls one of the hydrogen bomb tests that went wrong, Castle Bravo. For more information about Castle Bravo and other tests, see: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html and http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/atmosphr/index.html.

Segment 3: "From the Archives: Linus Pauling" (1958).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 14:10
On February of 1958, noted physicists and Noble Prize winners Edward Teller (the "father" of the H-bomb) and Linus Pauling sat down to debate the effects of continuing nuclear testing and fallout on humans. This is Pauling's initial comments during the debate. For more information about Pauling's career and anti-nuclear activism, see: http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/pauling.html.

Segment 4: "From the Archives: The Enewetak Clean-Up." (1977).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 10:48
This is the sound track from a Department of Defense film titled "Preparation Clean Up, Enewetak Atoll" (1977). It was produced by the Defense Nuclear Agency and shows "the actions being taken to cleanup the islands comprising Enewetak Atoll so that the previous inhabitants could return to live on some of them. The inhabitants were forced to relocate to other islands in 1948 when the United States began atmospheric testing of nuclear devices at the Pacific Proving Ground. Over the 1948-1958 time period, 43 tests were conducted on or near Enewetak Atoll. Numerous decaying, abandoned buildings are shown that had to be demolished, while others were still suitable for use by the returning people. Homes, schools and government buildings had to be built. The film details the radiation studies conducted to determine the extent of contamination and the uptake of radioactive particles by plants. Some parts of the Atoll would never be suitable for habitation because of the extent of contamination. One of the decontamination activities planned was removing the contaminated soil, transporting it to craters on one of the highly contaminated islands, and encasing it in concrete. Those organizations cooperating in the cleanup effort included the Atomic Energy Commission, the Coast Guard, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and a marine biology firm."

Segment 5: "Roger Ray on the Enewetak Clean-up and Repatriation of the Enewetakese" (2004).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 6:11

In this second selection from an extended interview conducted by Gerald Zahavi with Roger Ray (see segment 2 above), Ray talks about the clean up of Enewetak Atoll and his involvement in the repatriation of the Enewetakese.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Marantz PMD 222 manual

Sample release form.