A-Train is the story of one of the black Americans who, during World War II, graduated from Tuskegee Army Flying School and served as a pilot in the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Charles W. Dryden has prepared an honest, fast-paced, balanced, vividly written, and very personal account.
Wrapping historical narrative around 60 primary sources, including news clippings, speeches, letters, magazine articles, and government reports, this volume's three part organization chronicles what was unfolding in Nazi Germany through the lens of American reporters and writers, traces the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the US as well as its increasingly tight immigration policies, and then reveals Americans' horror upon the realization that the reports and stories of the Holocaust were not exaggerations or fabrications.
In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during the two years her family was in hiding. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
The reminiscences of Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank family in Amsterdam during the Second World War, presents a vivid story of life under Nazi occupation.
A decorated World War I veteran, Federal Judge Robert P. Patterson knew all too well the needs of soldiers on the battlefield. He was thus dismayed by America's lack of military preparedness when a second great war engulfed Europe in 1939-40. In this previously unpublished account long buried among the late author's papers and originally marked confidential, Patterson describes the vast challenges the United States faced as it had to equip, in a desperately short time, a fighting force capable of confronting a formidable enemy (eBook).
Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II.
This is the story of a remarkable life and a journey, from the privileged world of Prussian aristocracy, through the horrors of World War II, to high society in the television age of postwar America. It is also an account of a spiritual voyage, from a conventional Christian upbringing, through marriage to Pastor Martin Niemoeller, to conversion to Judaism (eBook).
A World War II marine officer who survived three major campaigns in the Pacific offers an authentic and compelling picture of tank warfare in this chronicle of his experiences.
This work is Lloyd M. Wells's firsthand account of World War II based on a journal he kept during the war, letters he sent home, and personal records, as well as recollections of people and events (eBook).
Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers. When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) (eBook).
“The Good War”, for which Studs Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize, is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Terkel as interviewer. His subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history of World War II.”
In Guadalcanal Marine, Kerry L. Lane recounts the dark reality of combat experienced by the men of the 1st Marine Division fighting on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. With eighty gripping photographs and his text, he brings to life the struggles of his companions as they achieve these two astonishing victories (eBook).
Ruth Gruber, special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, tells about her experiences carrying out a mission to bring one thousand Jewish and Christian refugees from Italy in 1944, and discusses her efforts on their behalf once they arrived in America.
Drawing on a blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts--including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections--Hell Before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.
Originally published in 1957, this enduring classic remains a touching and insightful look into the world of the kamikaze. From the age of 15, Yasuo Kuwahara began a life of military service that included suffering through brutal basic training, participating in ferocious aerial combat against the Allies, and avoiding a suicide mission when an atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, near his hometown (eBook).
Yasutaro Soga's Life behind Barbed Wire (Tessaku selkatsu) is a firsthand account of the incarceration of a Hawai'i Japanese during World War II. Although centered on one man's experiences, Life behind Barbed Wire is enhanced by Soga's trained eye and instincts as a professional journalist, which allowed him to paint a larger picture of those extraordinary times and his place in them.
From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action of air combat during World War II. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain (eBook).
This is the only known written work by any of the eighteen National Guard division commanders mobilized in1940 and 1941. It chronicles from a National Guard perspective many of the challenges and growing pains experienced by the Army in the critical months leading up to its entry into World War II (eBook).
These seventy-one firsthand stories from survivors of the Holocaust teach us to choose to remember for life, for their words are not about hatred and death but about ethics, decency, and love. Although the stories are arranged to accompany the weekly Torah readings and many of the Jewish holidays, they are just as meaningful when read on their own, in any sequence (eBook).
Taps for a Jim Crow Army is a powerful collection of letters written by black soldiers in the 1940s to various government and nongovernment officials. The soldiers expressed their disillusionment, rage, and anguish over the discrimination and segregation they experienced in the Army.
Whispered Silences presents memories and images of the American detention camps to which 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were sent during World War II.
A member of the famed 41st Infantry Brigade, the 'Jungleers, ' Catanzaro saw combat at Hollandia, Biak, Zamboanga, and Mindanao. He was a part of the Japanese occupation force and writes with feeling about living among his former enemies and of the decision to drop the atom bomb (eBook).
Resources in Library Databases
Off campus, these resources are available only to RVCC students, staff, and faculty and require a login with your G# and password.
An online resource that provides an overview of historical US events of the last 500 years with timelines, videos of newsreels, photographic documentation, biographies, statistics on historic US expeditions and exploration, immigration maps and charts plus links to many primary source documents.
This database provides an overview of historical US events of the last 500 years with timelines, videos of newsreels, photographic documentation, biographies, statistics on historic US expeditions and exploration, immigration maps and charts plus links to many primary source documents on topics such as state charters, Federalist Papers, westward expansion, women’s suffrage, State of the Union addresses and Presidential Inaugural addresses.
Perform a keyword search, then select Primary Sources from the tabbed results.
To browse, select Primary Sources and then World War II and the Forties: 1939-1949
The Artstor Digital Library provides access to 2.5+ million images of the world’s cultural heritage, all rights-cleared for use in education. Perform an advanced search to narrow by time period or geographical location.
All images have comprehensive metadata and all content is rights-cleared for educational use. Images can be found for topics such as anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art history, fashion & costume, literature, religion, theater, and world history.
Densho is a nonprofit organization started in 1996, with the initial goal of documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. Densho uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Site includes information, an encyclopedia, archives, a learning center, a blog, and news.
The Gail Project is a collaborative, international public history project that explores the founding years of the American military occupation of Okinawa after World War II from 1950-1952.