Jesse
Bier, Army
His
face was shredded by a German bazooka shell, but Bier came
home with a sense of humor the war couldn’t destroy.
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Nine
people with
compelling stories about life in wartime. Twelve students
to research, interview and tape those stories, take pictures
and build a Web site. And just three weeks do to it.
Students
at the University of Montana School of Journalism
who signed up for a 2004 Wintersession course called
The Veterans History Project were not sure what lay
ahead. But they plunged in — working as a team
on tight deadlines to produce these stories, tapes
and photos. The veterans they met told them tales
they had not shared before because no one had asked.
For the
students, the best lessons came outside the classroom.
They learned about hope, about the resiliency of
the human spirit, about loyalty and about patriotism.
The people they met included a soldier who, at 15,
became a prisoner of the Japanese, a sailor who watched
a kamikaze plane hit his brother’s ship, and
an Army flier who played poker with Tyrone Power.
These are
their stories.
About
the Project
About
19 million war veterans live in the United States
today, but every day we lose 1,700 of them. To honor
our nation's war veterans for their service and to
collect their stories while they are still among
us, the U.S. Congress created the Veterans History
Project.
The authorizing legislation, sponsored by Representatives Ron Kind, Amo
Houghton, and Steny Hoyer in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senators
Max Cleland and Chuck Hagel in the U.S. Senate, received unanimous support
and was signed into law by President Clinton on Oct. 27, 2000. Public
Law 106-380 calls upon the American Folklife Center at the Library of
Congress to collect and preserve audio- and video-taped oral histories,
along with documentary materials such as letters, diaries, maps, photographs,
and home movies, of America's war veterans and those who served in support
of them.
The Veterans History Project covers World War I, World War II, and the
Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars. It includes all participants
in those wars — men and women, civilian and military. It documents
the contributions of civilian volunteers, support staff, and war industry
workers as well as the experiences of military personnel from all ranks
and all branches of service — the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps,
and Navy, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.
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