In honor of the Veterans History Project's 25th anniversary, we’re highlighting photographs and stories from six compelling collections that offer personal and visual perspectives on military service across more than a century of conflicts, from World War I through the war in Iraq.
William Munro found time to sketch and draw hundreds of pieces of art while serving during World War II. Working as a medic and supply clerk in the Army's medical battalion in North Africa and Europe, Munro sketched everything from scenes of war to lush landscapes to the camraderie of his fellow soldiers. His letters and some 370 artworks are in his collection at the Veterans History Project.
The Veterans History Project was founded by Congress in 2000. Since then, it has grown into an archive of stories from over 121,000 U.S. military veterans. The service records, letters, diaries, photographs and other memorabilia spans generations and gives a unique, moving view of what it means to serve in the U.S. military.
During World War II, the Office of War Information recorded news and American propaganda onto 16-inch discs which were then broadcast domestically and overseas. The Library acquired tens of thousands of these discs after the war and has been working to preserve them ever since. Colin Hochstetler, a Library Junior Fellow, talks about his work with these time-capsule discs in this question-and-anwer session.
The folklorist Sidney Robertson was one of the trailblazing American women of the 1930s and 1940s, the kind of life you’d associate with Martha Gellhorn, Dorothea Lange or Zora Neale Hurston. Her work directing the California Folk Music Project from 1938-40 is the subject "California Gold," a new book from the Library and the University of California Press.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is often regarded as the largest folk art project ever created and the Library’s American Folklife Center has held the quilt’s archival collections since 2019. Parts of it are on display at the initial exhibit of the Library's Treasures Gallery, opening in June.
Some of the U.S. military's best intelligence assets during both World Wars were Native American troops who used their own, unwritten languages as the basis for coded radio messages. These Code Talkers, particularly Navajo Marines, were invaluable in the Pacific theater of World War II. Twenty-nine Navajo Code Talkers were later awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Many of these soldiers' personal stories are preserved in the LIbrary's Veterans History Project.
In World War II, the U.S. government enlisted American citizens to report what their neighbors, coworkers and classmates were saying about the war in a controversial "rumor control" project.
The Library's Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free images from our vast collections of prints and photographs are endlessly entertaining, so why not check out the collection of Games for Fun and Relaxation?
