For several years, the U.S. Navy Memorial has hosted students from around the country through its Sea Service internship. As part of the program, interns conduct oral histories of Navy veterans and produce short films based on those interviews. The full interviews are then donated to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project (VHP). For the first time, VHP and the U.S. Navy Memorial are inviting all students in grades 5-12 to create and submit short documentaries featuring the stories of U.S. veterans for the 2025 Sea Service Film Festival. This festival is the perfect opportunity for teachers and parents to get young people involved in documenting and preserving the history of our nation’s veterans. This blog contains the call for entries to the VHP/Navy Memorial Film Festival, including an overview of the festival, submission guidelines, and rules.
The following is a guest blog post by Kerry Ward, a liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project (VHP). Predating even the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Navy was commissioned in 1775 by the Continental Congress. Starting with a small anti-piracy force with two ships [i], the U.S. Navy now is the largest navy in …
The following is a guest post by Andrew Cassidy-Amstutz, archivist for the Veterans History Project. In our world of daily Facebook status updates and trending Twitter hashtags, an annotated map by Homer Bluford Clonts caught my eye as an example of how service members during World War II recorded their daily thoughts and activities in …
This month sees a round of 70th anniversaries relating to the end of World War II–the release of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, and Japan’s announcement of surrender on August 15th. The Veterans History Project‘s (VHP) official commemoration will come next month, with the September 8th release of an …
The following is the second of a two-part guest post by Joseph Patton, a Library of Congress Junior Fellow working with the Veterans History Project this summer. Last week, I shared with you three stories from the Veterans History Project (VHP) collections of World War II Navy veterans who served in the Pacific theater of …
The following is the first of a two-part guest post by Joseph Patton, a Library of Congress Junior Fellow working with the Veterans History Project this summer. Last month, I found myself walking the National Mall in Washington, DC, after the sun had set and the lights blazed on the monuments. The way they are …
Happy Birthday, Navy! The United States Navy turned a whopping 239 years old on October 13th. On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress created the Continental Navy, thus establishing what would eventually become the United States Navy. To commemorate the occasion, I wanted to explore an intriguing and historic Navy tradition that is frequently …
