Remembering World War II
Loren E. Pennington
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
PATRICK KELLEY’S recent editorial on the Ken Burns PBS series “The War” correctly pointed out that we are losing the collective memories of current generations through a failure to write those memories down. As Kelley put it, the memories most likely to survive are not those embedded in our ever-changing electronic media, but “those written or printed on good paper and entrusted to children and grandchildren.” In the case of our rapidly-disappearing World War II veterans, this is certainly true.
Fortunately, the Library of Congress is heading a nationwide effort to collect the memories of as many as possible of America’s veterans of all wars through oral history interviews, and the various states are cooperating in this effort. In 2005, the Kansas State Legislature appropriated funds to interview Kansas World War II veterans in a program managed by the Kansas State Historical Society and operated through various local agencies, including the Department of Social Sciences at ESU. The Department has now completed 50 interviews with Lyon County veterans, and audio tapes and written transcripts on “good paper” of these interviews are available to the public at the Lyon County Historical Archives on Sixth Avenue and at the ESU Archives in the Anderson Library on the College of Emporia campus.
Three of the Lyon County interviewees will describe their wartime experiences at the ESU World War II Roundtable to be held in the Kanza Room of the ESU Memorial Union at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5. Navy Torpedoman 3rd Class John Greer of Emporia will discuss submarine warfare in Japanese waters; Army Air Force Sergeant Walter Zumbrum of Americus will talk about air warfare in the jungles of the Southwest Pacific; and Marine Corporal Richard McCoy of Emporia will describe his experiences in the battle for Okinawa. ESU History Professor Christopher Lovett is in charge of the program, which is free and open to the public.
But there are still at least a hundred living veterans of World War II in Lyon County who have not been interviewed. Their children and grandchildren should follow Pat Kelley’s advice: get them to put their memories down on paper. And do it NOW.
abc123 (anonymous) says...
This is so true, my Grandfather passed away this April and was a Veteran of WWII, I always wanted to get his story on paper or tape recorder, he spent a lot of time in the Army after the War in many different countries and I just kick myself for not getting all his adventures documented! I encourage anyone who thinks this may be a good idea to just find the time to do it before it is too late!
October 10, 2007 at 2:20 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )