Forging Bonds: The Veterans History Project Turns 25

—This is a guest post by Travis Bickford, the head of the Program Coordination and Communications Section of the Veterans History Project. It also appears in the January-February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

Preserving the personal narratives of our nation’s veterans has the power to connect and reunite people. These stories link generations, bridge cultural and geographic divides and build lasting bonds between families, friends and even strangers.

The Veterans History Project at the Library was born out of a family moment. Former congressman Ron Kind attended a backyard gathering and listened as his uncle and father swapped war stories. He realized the value of those kinds of stories and the importance of preserving them. Soon after, he brought the idea to Congress.

Since its founding by Congress in 2000, VHP has blossomed into an archive of stories from over 121,000 U.S. military veterans. Those stories are used in all kinds of ways — perhaps by Ken Burns for a documentary film, by Liza Mundy for a bestselling book, by a family member who just wants to hear a loved one’s voice again or by your neighbors, simply because they’re interested in World War II history.

VHP unites and even reunites people — witness the story of the Pacific war POW diaries from the Robert Augur and George Pearcy collections.

Pearcy and Augur were captured by the Japanese in the spring of 1942 in the Philippines following the Battle of Corregidor. According to Pearcy’s diaries and records, they were incarcerated together at Cabanatuan Prison Camp, just north of Manila. Veterans often speak of the intense relationships they develop with fellow soldiers while deployed. Augur and Pearcy were no exception and became fast friends.

The scarcity of paper in remote places in the Philippine islands made diaries like these rare. Augur journaled in a small Japanese notebook. Pearcy documented his experiences on whatever he could find: old maps, hospital forms, the back of labels peeled from tins of mackerel. He wrote about his memories of Bataan, illnesses he’d suffered, things he wanted to do when he got back home, life at Cabanatuan — the beatings of prisoners, the decapitation of a guard, attempted escapes.

After over two years at Cabanatuan, Pearcy was selected to board a prison ship headed to a labor camp in Japan in the fall of 1944. Augur, whose leg had been amputated because of injuries suffered in battle, stayed behind. Just before shipping out, Pearcy gave his diary and letters to Augur and asked him to send them to Pearcy’s family in case he didn’t make it home.

Sure enough, Pearcy’s ship was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine, and he perished. Augur was released in 1945, after the war, and sent his friend’s documents to Pearcy’s parents.

Seventy years later, Pearcy’s family donated the diary and letters to VHP. And after reading a blog post written by a VHP staff member about the Pearcy diary, Augur’s family contacted the Library and donated his diary, too — reuniting the two friends in the VHP archives.

Last year, those diaries were displayed side by side in a new Library exhibition, “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress.” When the exhibit opened, VHP invited the Pearcy and Augur families to attend, bringing them together for the first time. They shared a private lunch at VHP’s info center in the Jefferson Building. Many tears were shed — happy tears.

In the summer of 2024, VHP hosted the family of a Korean War veteran, 1st Sgt. Richard Owens, at a ceremony marking the donation of the late patriarch’s collection. The event resembled a mini reunion, bringing together almost 20 family members spanning three generations and multiple states to honor his legacy as a Marine, father, grandfather, uncle and brother.

Owens served in the Marines for 20 years — including as an infantry machine gunner in the Korean War — and continued on active duty and in the Marine Corps Reserves until 1990.

Documenting veterans history helps create new relationships, too.

Author Liza Mundy and science educator Bill Nye met after Mundy referenced Nye’s mother in her 2017 bestseller, “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the Women Code Breakers of World War II.”

Over 10,000 women with skills in mathematics and languages were recruited as cryptographers (codemakers) and cryptanalysts (codebreakers) and tasked with breaking German and Japanese codes.

These women were sworn to secrecy, so decades passed without anyone knowing how vital their role was in helping the Allies end the war — a demonstration of the importance of preserving and making accessible as much of their history as possible.

Mundy had used VHP and other Library collections extensively while researching her book. Nye, whose mother was a Code Girl, saw his mother mentioned in the book and in 2018 emailed Mundy about it. Two years later, VHP hosted a reunion for Code Girls, featuring both Mundy and Nye as guest speakers. There, Nye donated materials from his mother’s World War II service, allowing her story to live on.

And for Mundy and Nye, the Code Girls story had an especially happy ending: They got married in 2022.

John Stavast’s military career began in World War II as an Army infantryman and ended with his retirement in 1980. In 1949, after a three-year break from serving, he moved to the Air Force to become a pilot.

In 1967, Stavast, flying his 91st combat mission, was shot down in North Vietnam and incarcerated for more than five years at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. While imprisoned, Stavast kept a roster, handwritten on camp toilet paper, of every pilot who was captured and imprisoned with him — including future Sen. John McCain. That roster currently is held in the VHP archives, along with seven unique collections from pilots who also appear on Stavast’s list.

After he was released, doctors confirmed that Stavast had suffered broken bones in his back, arms and legs, a skull fracture and a fractured jaw — just some of what he endured while imprisoned for over half a decade. And that’s only his story. It’s likely some POWs on that roster forged a familial bond with each other, which makes capturing their stories and reuniting them at VHP all the more necessary.

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