In 1982, former United States Marine Corps historian H. C. L. Merillat published a history of the Guadalcanal Campaign based largely on his wartime diaries, but he left out entries that showed him struggling with his role in the military and in the war. Unpublished excerpts reveal Merillat’s thoughts and insecurities during the campaign and reveal some of the burdens of recording history as it happened.
Staff Favorites is a new interview-based series in which staff members share favorite items from Manuscript Division collections. This guest post is by Manuscript Division cataloging librarian Joy Orillo-Dotson.
Wendell Cannon, a high school teacher from Illinois, toured Europe during his summer break in 1936. His journal, photographs, and other souvenirs capture familiar tourist activities such as a visit to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe as well as the unique experience of visiting Nazi Germany and witnessing Jesse Owens win gold in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.
Join Rachel Gross, author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, to learn more about the surprising military origins of your favorite outdoor gear.
A 1937 tea party held at the home of the chief of naval operations, today’s official vice presidential residence, reveals a mansion that was once a showcase of women’s hidden political influence within the nation’s military elite.
Join the Manuscript Division and an interdisciplinary panel of scientists and scholars on August 1, at 12:00pm (EDT) to reflect on the global legacies of the atomic bomb.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The Manuscript Division recently joined an event with veterans and Gold Star families that became more about listening than telling, and offered powerful insights about national healing and the power of conversation in a shared space.
Join historians Meg McAleer and Josh Levy at noon (EDT) on Thursday, May 11, as they discuss founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud’s narrow escape from Nazi-controlled Vienna with Andrew Nagorski, author of the new book Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom.
Manuscript collections often include scrapbooks, which tell unique stories but can be challenging to preserve. With Edwin Swillinger’s scrapbook, archivist Katherine Madison chose to disassemble it in order to provide the best care for the many photographs and other documents depicting Swillinger’s military service and life in post-World War II Japan.
