Bancroft Library
Oral History Center Partners in Yale Celebration of James C. Scott
On March 28, OHC historian Todd Holmes participated in the retirement celebration of James C. Scott at Yale University. For many academics around the world, Scott needs no introduction. He is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University; founder of the renowned Yale Agrarian Studies Program; and author of a series of groundbreaking books that over the decades have become mainstays across the fields of the humanities and social sciences. To be sure, this impressive scholarship not only earned him honors from nearly every corner of the academy, but also made him one of the most influential and widely read social scientists in the world. In 2022, Scott announced his retirement, drawing to a close an academic career that had spanned over five decades.
This past March, scholars and students alike gathered at Yale University to celebrate Scott and his extraordinary career—an event in which the Oral History Center was proud to participate. The OHC began working with Yale in 2018 on an oral history project to document both the career of Jim Scott and the history of the Agrarian Studies Program he founded in 1991. Led by OHC historian Todd Holmes and released in 2022, The Yale Agrarian Studies Oral History Project featured the full life history of Scott and shorter interviews with sixteen affiliates of the program. At the event, Holmes – a Yale alum and former graduate coordinator of the Agrarian Studies Program – presented bound volumes of the oral histories to the Yale University Library. In addition to the oral history presentation, the event also featured a screening of the documentary film, In A Field All His Own: The Life and Career of James C. Scott. Produced by Holmes, the film draws from the nearly thirty hours of oral history interviews conducted for the project to trace the intellectual journey of the award-winning social scientist from his childhood in New Jersey through each of the works he produced in his accomplished career. The film is available to the public on YouTube. It is also linked below.
Jim Scott expressed his appreciation for the event in his concluding remarks, noting how much he preferred a celebration of this sort – with film and discussion – over the typical academic retirement symposium, or Festschrift. The latter, in his view, “always seems like a memorial,” he joked with the audience, “and I assure you, I’m still here!” Always the humorist, he punctuated the point by announcing the forthcoming release of his book on Burma’s Irrawaddy River by Yale University Press, another noteworthy achievement for a scholar who turns 88 years young in December. Scott had discussed this project in his oral history, hinting that he still had something to say about rivers before he “hung up his coat.” It was a fitting end for an event celebrating an extraordinary career.
Additional Resources
James C. Scott: Agrarian Studies and Over 50 Years of Pioneering Work in the Social Sciences
Yale Agrarian Studies Oral History Project
About the Oral History Center
The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library preserves voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public. You can find our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.
Bibliography for Trauma-informed Interviewing
In April 2024, the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives project team at The Oral History Center—Roger Eardley-Pryor, Shanna Farrell, and Amanda Tewes—had the opportunity to present about our project at the National Council on Public History conference in Salt Lake City. Since our presentation, we’ve gotten a number of questions about the literature we read related to trauma-informed interviewing, intergenerational trauma, and memory. Below is the bibliography we used, as well as some recent works. We hope this provides some guidance for your own work, and we’d love to hear from you if there are any articles or resources that have been helpful to you!
General
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
Mary Marshall Clark, “The September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report,” The Journal of American History 89:2 (September 2002): 569-579.
Mary Marshall Clark, “Resisting Attrition in Stories of Trauma,” Narrative 13:3 (October 2005): 294-298.
Lily Dayton. 2019 “Keep These Seven Lessons in Mind When Interviewing Trauma Survivors.” Center for Health Journalism. April 17, 2020. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/insights/keep-these-seven-lessons-mind-when-interviewing-trauma-survivors
Andrea Eidinger, “Trauma and Orality: New Publications on Mass Violence and Oral History,” Social History 49:98 (May 2016): 187-196.
Steven High, Oral History at the Crossroads: Sharing Life Stories of Survival and Displacement (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014).
Marianne Hirsch, “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory,” Discourse 15:2, Special Issue: The Emotions, Gender, and the Politics of Subjectivity (Winter 1992-93): 3-29.
Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012).
Mark Klempner, “Navigating Life Review Interviews with Survivors of Trauma,” Oral History Review 27:2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 67-83.
Selma Leydesdorff, “Oral History, Trauma, and September 11, Comparative Oral History,” in edited volume September 11th-12th: The Individual and the State Faced with Terrorism (2013).
Carmen Nobel. 2018. “10 Rules for Reporting on War Trauma Survivors.” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. April 17, 2020. https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/10-rules-interviewing-trauma-survivors/
Emma L. Vickers, “Unexpected Trauma in Oral Interviewing,” Oral History Review 46:1 (Winter/Spring 2019): 134-141.
Specific to Japanese American History
Jeffery F. Burton and Mary M. Farrell, “The Power of Place: James Hatsuaki Wakasa and the Persistence of Memory,” Discover Nikkei (June 13, 2021): http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2021/6/13/wakasa-1/
Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites (Tucson, AZ: Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Publications in Anthropology 74, 1999).
Connie Y. Chiang, Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Roger Daniels, “Words Do Matter: A Note on Inappropriate Terminology and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans,” in Louis Fiset and Gail Nomura, eds. Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2005).
Roger Daniels, Sandra Taylor, and Harry L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, Revised Edition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986).
Art Hansen, Barbed Voices: Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese American Social Disaster (Denver: University of Colorado Press, 2018).
William M. Hohri, Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress (Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 1988).
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (New York: One World, 2020).
Stephen Holsapple, dir., produced by Satsuki Ina, Children of the Camps (Los Angeles, CA: AsianCrush, now Cineverse Corp., 1999).
Satsuki Ina, The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest (Berkeley, California: Heyday Books, 2024).
Donna K. Nagata, “Intergenerational Effects of the Japanese American Internment,” International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, edited by Yael Danieli (New York: Plenum Press, 1998), p 125-139.
Donna K. Nagata and Wendy J. Y. Cheng, “Intergenerational Communication of Race-Related Trauma by Japanese American Former Internees,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 73:3 (2003): 266-278.
Donna K. Nagata, Jacqueline H. J. Kim, and Kaidi Wu, “The Japanese American Wartime Incarceration: Examining the Scope of Racial Trauma,” American Psychology 74:1 (Jan. 2019): 36-48.
Donna K. Nagata, Jackie H. J. Kim, Teresa U. Nguyen, “Processing Cultural Trauma, Intergenerational Effects of the Japanese American Incarceration,” Journal of Social Issues 71 (2015): 356-370.
Lisa Nakamura “Seeking Meaning from the Past: Psychological Effects of Tule Lake Pilgrimage on Japanese American Former Internees and Their Descendants” (PsyD diss., Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, 2008).
Raymond Okamura. “The American Concentration Camps: A Cover-Up through Euphemistic Terminology,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 10:3 (1982).
Emiko Omori, dir., produced by Emiko and Chizu Omori, Rabbit in the Moon: A Documentary/Memoir about the World War II Japanese Internment Camps (Mill Valley, California, 1999).
Brandon Shimoda, The Afterlife Is Letting Go (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2024).
Karen L. Suyemoto, “Ethnic and Racial Identity in Multiracial Sansei: Intergenerational Effects of the World War II Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans,” Genealogy 2:26 (2018).
Stephanie Takaragawa, “Not for Sale: How WWII Artifacts Mobilized Japanese Americans Online,” Anthropology Now, 7:3 (2015): 94-105,
Bancroft Library Processing News
The archivists of the Bancroft Library are pleased to announce that in the past quarter (January-March 2024) we opened the following Bancroft archival collections to researchers.
Manuscript and University Archives/Faculty Papers Collections:
Data Center records (processed by Lara Michels with the help of Christina Velazquez Fidler)
Isabel Wiel papers (processed by Presley Hubschmitt)
David E. Good and Forrest M. Craig collection of family papers (processed by Lara Michels)
Nathan and Julia Hare papers (processed by Marjorie Bryer)
Delmer Myers Brown papers (processed by Lara Michels and student assistant David Eick)
Martinez, Dean, and DuCasse family papers and photographs (processed by Lara Michels and student assistant Malayna Chang)
Joan Bekins collection of Terwilliger Nature Education Center records (processed by Jaime Henderson and Lara Michels)
Bissinger and Company records (processed by Presley Hubschmitt)
Howard Besser papers and audiovisual materials (processed by Lara Michels and student assistant David Eick)
Sherman Lewis research collection relating to the Hayward Area Planning Association (HAPA) (processed by Jaime Henderson and Lara Michels)
Barbara Oliver collection of theatre materials (processed by Jaime Henderson and Lara Michels)
Michael and Cynthia Horowitz collection on psychedelics, 1954-2006 (processed by Lara Michels and student assistant David Eick)
Rosborough family papers (processed by Lara Michels and student assistant Malayna Chang)
Pictorial Collections and Items:
127 small collections and single items (approximately 4,911 items, total)
Additions to Cathy Cade’s autobiographical photograph albums, documenting lesbian life and community activism in the Bay Area, 2008-2015. (over 1,900 items)
San Joaquin County mug shot books, wanted notices, and law enforcement ephemera of Sheriff Thomas Cunningham. (over 2,300 items)
The Robert Altman photograph archive, which is particularly strong in counter culture and rock ‘n’ roll images of the late 1960s and 1970s, including work from his time as a photographer for Rolling Stone magazine (approximately 35,000 items) (online finding aid pending)
Remembering Joseph E. Bodovitz (1930 – 2024)
On March 9, 2024, California lost one of its most revered public servants. For over forty years, Joseph Bodovitz stood at the center of the state’s regulatory process. He was the founding executive director of both the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the California Coastal Commission. He was the executive director of the Public Utility Commission and headed up the California Environmental Trust. And before retirement, he agreed to serve as the project director for Bay Vision 2020. To be sure, his fingerprints could be found—one way or another—on some of the most important regulatory policies and decisions passed in California during the twentieth century—actions that would come to impact people throughout the Golden State, both then and now.
Joe, as most knew him, did not initially set his sights on government work. Born in Oklahoma City during the Great Depression, he studied English literature at Northwestern University, and after serving in the Korean War, earned a graduate degree in journalism at Columbia University. In 1956, he accepted a job as a reporter with the San Francisco Examiner, allowing him to return to a state and region for which the young Oklahoman had grown fond during his military service with the Navy. In the early 1960s, Bodovitz left journalism to take a position with the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, an organization whose work in urban policy and development had become critical in the postwar boom of San Francisco. Such work proved a good fit for Bodovitz, whose reporting at the Examiner focused on politics and urban redevelopment in the city. By 1964, his reputation and work at SPUR had caught the attention of Eugene McAteer, a state senator from San Francisco who sought to establish a government study on regulating development and fill in the San Francisco Bay. Bodovitz not only joined that new group, he took the lead in crafting what would become known as the Bay Plan. When finished, he also agreed to serve as the founding executive director of the new regulatory agency that plan created, BCDC.
Bodovitz was entering uncharted waters in his role at BCDC. There was no precedent for this kind of environmental regulation back in 1965. In fact, BCDC was the first regulatory agency of its kind in the nation. That meant Bodovitz, with the help of commission chair Melvin B. Lane, was charged with creating a regulatory structure and policy from scratch. The task was daunting, especially in light of the array of forces they confronted throughout the process, from city mayors and wealthy businesses to citizen groups and environmental organizations. For Bodovitz, the principle that guided his work was striking a balance between economic development and environmental conservation. “People sort of had to confront the legitimate interests of both conservation and development,” he recalled in his 1986 oral history. “They may disagree on a particular permit or a particular issue, but no fair-minded person can say marshlands aren’t important. Similarly, no fair-minded person can say ports aren’t important to the Bay Area economy.” As he would often point out, balance was the underlying principle of BCDC: “There is a reason why conservation and development are in the name.”
In 1972, California voters approved Proposition 20, which created another historic agency: the California Coastal Commission. And as quick as the votes were tallied around the creation of the new state agency, Bodovitz and Lane were asked to bring their expertise from BCDC to the regulation of the state’s 1,100-mile coastline. In the familiar role of executive director, Bodovitz began to adapt the regulatory structure and policies of the bay to the coast, crafting what would become the coastal plan. His experience aside, the task proved even more daunting this time around. As Bodovitz recalled, the stakes were higher and the issues much more complex. “I don’t mean to make the BCDC planning sound simple because God knows it wasn’t; but relative to what we were dealing with in the Coastal Commission—it was simpler.” Ultimately, that work created a foundation for coastal regulation which would be studied around the world, and help made California one of the most pristine coastal regions of the Western Hemisphere. Fifty years later, the shorelines of Golden State still stand as a legacy of Bodovitz’s work.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bodovitz’s public service on behalf of California continued. Shortly after he left the Coastal Commission in 1979, he was named executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission—the state agency charged with regulating utility companies throughout the state. Here, Bodovitz brought his experience and expertise to a range of important issues, from the breakup of telephone giant AT&T to the rising debate about deregulation and its impact on the state’s utility services. After his terms with the PUC, Bodovitz was tapped to head the newly created California Environmental Trust, as well as serve as the project director for Bay Vision 2020, which created a plan for a regional Bay Area government. In both organizations, Bodovitz provided invaluable leadership in helping to address a new set of environmental and development issues at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
It is an oft-stated adage among those in politics that civil servants are the unsung heroes of government. They conduct the research, staff the committees and commissions, and do the legwork that turns a written bill into an effective public policy. Joe Bodovitz was one of California’s unsung heroes. The Oral History Center had the privilege of conducting two oral histories with Bodovitz, documenting his experience and insights for future generations. The first, published in 1986 as part of the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Era Project, covered his experience at BCDC. Segments of this oral history are featured in the OHC’s Voices for the Environment exhibit and the accompanying podcast episode “Tides of Conservation.” The second oral history, published in 2015, offers an in-depth look at Bodovitz’s life and career. Both oral histories are available online through the links below.
Will Travis—another unsung hero of California in own right—perhaps said it best when writing the introduction for Bodovit’s 2015 oral history.
By having Joe as my friend for over 40 years and watching how other people treat him, I’ve learned why the Yiddish word mensch had to be created. A mensch is a person of integrity and honor, someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. In colloquial American English, a mensch is a stand-up kind of guy. Joe is a mensch.
World War II-era Japanese American Incarceration: A Guide to the Oral History Center’s Work
Anthology created by the Oral History Center
Research by Sari Morikawa, Serena Ingalls, and Timothy Yue, undergraduate researchers
After the entrance of the United States into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which mandated the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast into incarceration camps inland for the duration of the war. This forced removal uprooted families, disrupted businesses, and dispersed communities — impacting generations of Japanese Americans. The Oral History Center, or the OHC, and other archival collections in The Bancroft Library, feature several projects on this chapter of American history, comprising hundreds of interviews, photographs, artifacts, graphic illustrations, and podcasts for use by scholars and the public.
Find these interviews and all our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. You can search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Find all the oral history projects mentioned here, along with more in-depth descriptions, on our projects page.
There are six parts to this collection guide to Oral History Center and other Bancroft Library resources:
- Projects about Japanese American incarceration
- Related projects
- Individual interviews
- How to search our collection
- Selected articles that highlight and synthesize this work
- Acknowledgements
Part 1: Projects about Japanese American Incarceration
Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives
The Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project is the OHC’s newest project on this subject, consisting of interviews with child survivors and descendants of those who were incarcerated. The project documents the ways in which intergenerational trauma and healing occurred after the United States government’s incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Conducted by Roger Eardley-Pryor, Shanna Farrell, and Amanda Tewes, these interviews examine and compare how private memory, creative expression, place, and public interpretation intersect at sites of incarceration. Initial interviews focus on the Manzanar and Topaz prison camps, and pose a comparison through the lens of place, popular culture, and collective memory. Exploring narratives of healing as a through line, these interviews investigate the impact of different types of healing, how this informs collective memory, and how these narratives change across generations. The first set of interviews, comprised of 100 hours of oral history interviews with 23 narrators, continues to grow with interviews featuring child survivors and descendants of the Heart Mountain and Tule Lake prison camps.
“‘Dad, were you put in the camps?’ They didn’t talk about it. It was something you didn’t bring up…. He was honest but then he said, ‘But that happened in the past. You don’t need to dwell.’”
—Peggy Takahashi, on intergenerational silence related to her family’s incarceration
The project includes interpretive materials as well. Season eight of The Berkeley Remix, the OHC’s podcast based on oral history, explores themes from the project’s initial oral histories. “‘From Generation to Generation’: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration,” is a four-episode season featuring stories of activism, contested memory, identity and belonging, as well as artistic expression and memorialization of incarceration. In addition, ten graphic narrative illustrations created by artist Emily Ehlen vividly express the experiences of Japanese American incarceration during World War II and its effects on future generations. The interpretive materials, along with the oral histories, are available for use in classrooms.
Japanese American Confinement Sites
Interviews in the Japanese American Confinement Sites Oral History Project document the experiences of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II, including UC Berkeley students who attended college before or after the war. Themes running through these interviews include the experiences of forced relocation and incarceration; loss of property and livelihoods; identity; education; challenges faced after the end of the war; and emotional responses to their experiences. Many of the narrators went into fields such as public service, the military, advocacy, art, and education; some of them participated actively in the redress movement.
“Never again should there be such an event as a mass removal of an entire group of people without due process of law. … I try to pass that message on to as many people as I can.”
—Sam Mihara explains why he decided to become a speaker and share his stories
The voices of these narrators are brought to life in the slideshow: “The Uprooted: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans.” This slideshow was made to accompany the 2021–2022 exhibition in The Bancroft Library Gallery, “Uprooted: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans.” All photographs were drawn from the War Relocation Authority Photographs of Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement, 1942–1945, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, BANC PIC 1967.014–PIC. The oral histories are from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Oral History Project.
Japanese-American Relocation Reviewed
Japanese-American Relocation Reviewed is a multi-interview volume of oral histories from the Earl Warren in California project, dedicated to a discussion of Japanese American incarceration. In “Volume I: Decision and Exodus,” staff of the Justice Department, legal advisors to the US Army, and US and California State attorneys discuss the role of the US Department of Justice and the Western Defense Command in defining and administering policy towards enemy nationals, California Attorney General Earl Warren’s role in the forced removal of Japanese Americans to incarceration camps, the civil defense program, martial law, and the development of a constitutional argument for forced removal.
“We kept saying that we won’t do it and haven’t got the authority to do it. And there are enough precedents, you know with Lincoln suspending the writ of habeas corpus, that if the military wanted to do it, they could do it. But we frankly never thought they would. We thought they were too damn busy getting the troops to go fight a war some place else. That was our mistake.”
—James Rowe, assistant to United States Attorney General Francis Biddle
In “Volume II: The Internment,” members of the War Relocation Authority discuss the authority, selection, and administration of incarceration camp sites; resettlement out of the incarceration camps; origin and activities of the Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play. It also includes an appended interview with a wartime YWCA national board member on Idaho’s Minidoka camp in 1943; an address given by Robert B. Cozzens in 1945, “The Future of America’s Japanese;” and reproductions of Hisako Hibi’s paintings of Tanforan and Topaz.
The Office of Redress Administration Oral History Project
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, a historic piece of legislation that sought, for the first time, to provide a measure of justice to Japanese Americans forty-six years after their incarceration during World War II. Over its decade-long operation (1988–1998), the Office of Redress Administration reached over 82,000 people with a redress payment and official apology letter from the President of the United States. Redress: An Oral History Project, by Emi Kuboyama, project creator and interviewer, with Todd Holmes, Oral History Center historian and interviewer, documents the complex history of Japanese American redress. The film, Redress, provides the first in-depth look at the historic program as told by both those who administered and participated in it. Additional educational materials supplement the film by providing historical overviews of the Japanese American experience and redress program, as well as a list of resources for further study and discussion. The project received the generous support of the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Foundation and the National Park Service, US Department of Interior.
The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records and Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive
The Bancroft Library’s documentation of the Japanese American experience during World War II includes thousands of primary source materials drawn from an extensive collection of manuscripts, photographs, as well as audio and video. The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records, accessible through the Online Archive of California, consists of surplus copies of U.S. War Relocation Authority agency documents, including publications, staff papers, reports, correspondences, press releases, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks and a few photographs. Included is the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study, University of California, Berkeley, 1942-1946, containing diaries, letters and staff correspondence, reports and studies. These records include 250.5 linear feet (335 boxes, 84 cartons, 41 oversize volumes (folios), 7 oversize folders, 2 oversize boxes; 380 microfilm reels; 5,660 digital objects) (BANC MSS 67/14 c). The related Finding Aid to the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records 1930-1974 provides additional detail about the collection, including acquisition information, historic notes, scope, and contents.
In addition, Calisphere hosts the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA), which contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American incarceration, including: personal diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings; US War Relocation Authority materials, including newsletters, final reports, photographs, and other documents relating to the day-to-day administration; and personal histories documenting the lives of the people who were incarcerated in the camps, as well as of the administrators who created and worked there. Curated by the University of California, JARDA makes accessible materials from libraries, museums, archives, and oral history programs across California.
Part 2: Related Projects
Rosie the Riveter World War II American Home Front Oral History Project
The Rosie the Riveter World War II American Home Front Oral History Project comprises more than 200 interviews with women and men about the home front experience in the Bay Area. Many of the interviews in these projects include either brief references to or longer discussions about the World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans, and cover a broad range of experiences from a multiplicity of perspectives. Some interviews feature individuals who were incarcerated, while other interviews feature Japanese Americans in Hawaii and elsewhere who were not, but who recalled being affected by fear and prejudice. Other interviews include people who were friends, classmates, neighbors, and coworkers, who recalled the forced removal, and the emotions they experienced. Some of these acquaintances were troubled or appalled, whereas others were relieved and thought it justified. Some took care of farms and property until their neighbors returned; others benefited financially. Some go into great detail about race relations in farming and other communities throughout California.
“We used to say, now, why did they make all the Japanese pilots look so ugly?”
—Gladys Okada, in reference to World War II American war films
Volumes about Earl Warren
Two projects, Earl Warren in California and Law Clerks of Earl Warren, center around Earl Warren, who was California’s attorney general (1939–43) and governor (1943–53), before becoming chief justice of the Supreme Court (1953–69), and include an interview with Warren himself. The California project focuses on the years 1925–53, and documents the executive branch, the legislature, criminal justice, and political campaigns; Warren’s life; and changes in California during this period. The California project includes numerous multi-interview volumes that address different issues, including two volumes on labor, exploring Warren from the perspective of union members and labor leaders. The Law Clerks project comprises interviews of more than 40 of Warren’s law clerks; these narrators discuss watershed cases, the evolution of constitutional law, and other issues related to the court. Among other subjects, issues that arose in the interviews in these projects included the ways in which the narrators responded to the executive order; economic, military, and other motivations for the order; the process of identifying individuals and where they lived; reparations; economic consequences; and reflections on Warren’s actions and opinions. Earl Warren himself, in his interview, Conversations with Earl Warren on California Government, briefly addresses the incarceration and aftermath, including enforcement and other issues related to the Alien Land law, preparation of maps documenting where Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans lived, rationale for incarceration, reparations, and return from the camps.
“‘We urge you to appoint immediately a trustee to hold in trust all the properties of the Japanese in this state… lest they be taken over by the wolves.’ They didn’t do anything. All the wolves came in and took over their property.”
—Richard Perrin Graves, executive of the League of California Cities and member of the Ninth Regional Civil Defense Board, on his telegram to the US attorney general
Related Papers
The Bancroft Library and greater UC Berkeley Library have extensive collections that address Japanese American incarceration during World War II and related matters. Here are a few. The complete files of the Fair Play Committee (Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play) are held in the library and include a comprehensive file of newspaper clippings from West Coast publications. The papers of Senator Hiram W. Johnson have information on land laws and Asian immigration. Senator James D. Phelan‘s records document anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1920s. The papers of Robert W. Kenny, who succeeded Earl Warren as attorney general in 1943, have information on law enforcement questions in the aftermath of forced relocation.
Part 3: Individual interviews
“We can’t deny that the black people who lived in the Western Addition moved into places that were vacated because [of] the Japanese Americans who were put into internment camps. Our relationship with Japanese Americans is somehow affected by that history.”
—Carl Anthony, architect and environmental justice activist
Dozens of individual interviews scattered throughout the Oral History Center archive, with people from different backgrounds and walks of life, also detail many facets of this chapter in history. Although they were interviewed about other matters, the narrators in their oral histories in some way addressed Japanese American incarceration — sometimes only in passing, at other times more in depth. Some of the more well-known narrators include the following. Photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange discuss the artistic process, the ownership of their photographs, and the conditions in the camps. Willie Brown, speaker of the California Assembly and mayor of San Francisco, and Carl Anthony, architect and environmental justice activist, address race relations and how some black communities may have benefited from the forced relocation of Japanese Americans. Thomas Chinn, a historian and publisher of the Chinese Digest, discusses the evolution of race relations between Chinese and Japanese Americans in the United States, and noted that after Pearl Harbor, some people in Chinese communities wanted to distinguish themselves in order to avoid the same fate. Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa details her father being taken away by the FBI, her family’s subsequent incarceration, and the role incarceration played in her development as an artist.
“All this equipment my father had gathered — the books, everything that had to do with Japan — they just made a big bonfire and burned all of that. Everybody had panicked at that time. My sister cried and she said, ‘Oh, please don’t, don’t burn the books.’”
— Ruth Asawa, artist, on the fear her family experienced after her father was taken away
The best way to find individual OHC interviews that address any subject is to search by keyword from the search feature on our home page. Use as many keywords as you can think of (one at a time) that might relate to the topic. When you get to the results page, you will see a list of oral histories. Click on any one to get to detailed metadata about that oral history, plus access to the PDF of the oral history itself. As a first step, the abstract provides an overview of the major themes in the oral history. For a more comprehensive look, you can open the oral history directly from this page within digital collections; then use the search feature from within the oral history to find keywords. The oral history will also have a table of contents, and some also have an interview history and other front matter that will provide more information.
Part 4: How to search our collection:
Browse and access all of the oral history projects mentioned in this collection guide from the Oral History Center’s projects page. The projects page will provide a description of the project, and a list of all the oral histories on that project in the UC Library’s digital collections. To search the OHC’s archive by name, keyword, and other criteria, go to the OHC search feature on our home page. The OHC’s guides to various subjects in our collection can be accessed from the collections guide page. If you’re interested in making a documentary, podcast, or in undertaking other creative endeavors, you can access the audio/video and any related photos or ephemera through The Bancroft Library. You will need to open an account to order and access materials in the Reading Room. And here is more information about Rights and Permissions.
Explore collections related to Japanese American incarceration during World War II at all UC campuses by going to the UC Library Search. To explore all holdings from The Bancroft Library, go to the Advanced Search option from the Library Search page, and check “UC Berkeley Special Collections and Archives,” then search by keyword and other criteria.
Part 5: Selected articles that highlight and synthesize this work
The Oral History Center Presents the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project, by Shanna Farrell
The Oral History Center Presents The Berkeley Remix Season 8: “‘From Generation to Generation’: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration” by Amanda Tewes
Graphic Narrative Art by Emily Ehlen from OHC’s Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project, by Roger Eardley-Pryor
Q&A with Artist Emily Ehlen on Illustrating the OHC’s Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project, by Roger Eardley-Pryor
New podcast series explores the legacy of Japanese American incarceration: Read a Q&A with the Oral History Center’s Shanna Farrell about the Project, by UC Berkeley News reporter Anne Brice
‘I knew I had to draw it’: Illustrator brings to life testimonies of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII and their descendants in new Oral History Center project, by Dan Vaccaro, writer for UC Library Communications
Interconnections, by Roger Eardley-Pryor
Out of the Archives: Patrick Hayashi: From Mail Carrier to Associate President to Artist, by UC Berkeley undergraduate research apprentice Zachary Matsumoto
OHC URAP Student Zachary Matsumoto Reflects on Work with Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project, by UC Berkeley undergraduate research apprentice Zachary Matsumoto
‘Never again’: Library exhibit tells story of WWII Japanese American incarceration, sounds alarm on importance of remembering by Dan Vaccaro, writer for UC Library Communications
Oral history project highlights the little-known Japanese American redress program, by UC Berkeley News reporter Anne Brice
Redress: A film about the Office of Redress Administration by Edna Horiuchi in Discover Nikkei
Janet Daijogo: Japanese Incarceration and Finding Her Place through Aikido and Teaching, by UC Berkeley undergraduate and Oral History Center research assistant Deborah Qu
Bury the Phonograph: Oral Histories Preserve Records of Life in Hawaii During World War II, by UC Berkeley undergraduate and Oral History Center editorial assistant Shannon White
Part 6: Acknowledgements
National Park Service, Department of Interior
The following projects were funded, in part, by a grant from the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the US Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the US Government.
Japanese American Confinement Sites Oral History Project
Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project
Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records
Office of Redress Administration Oral History Project
Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Foundation
The Office of Redress Administration Oral History Project received generous support from the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Foundation. The foundation also provided generous support for a second phase of interviews for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project.
About the Oral History Center
UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center, or the OHC, is one of the oldest oral history programs in the world. We produce carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed oral histories and interpretive materials for the widest possible use. Since 1953 we have been preserving voices of people from all walks of life, with varying perspectives, experiences, pursuits, and backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public. You can find our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Oral History Center if you would like to see more work like this conducted and made freely available online. The Oral History Center is a predominantly self-funded research unit of The Bancroft Library. As such, we must raise the funds to cover the cost of all the work we do, including each oral history. You can give online, or contact us at ohc@berkeley.edu for more information about our funding needs for present and future projects.
A Californiana Returns to the Bay Area: Ana María de la Guerra de Robinson
Women’s history month is the perfect time to announce an exciting addition to Bancroft Library’s collection of daguerreotype portraits. At the end of 2023 the library was able to acquire a beautiful 1850s portrait of a Californiana: doña Ana María de la Guerra de Robinson, also known as Anita.
In this large (half plate format) daguerreotype of about 1850-1855, Anita wears a lace mantilla, in the Spanish fashion. A beautiful large daguerreotype like this was an extravagance at the time, and the portrait is all the more evocative because Anita, tragically, died within a few years of its creation.
Fortunately, quite a bit is known about her life. Anita was born into the prominent de la Guerra family of Santa Barbara in 1821 -– the same year the Spanish colonial period ended and control by an independent Mexico began. She was married at age 14, to an American trader and businessman named Alfred Robinson, 14 years her senior. This wedding is described in Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, so we have an unusually detailed account of what was a grand occasion.
She and her husband snuck away from her family in 1838, leaving their baby daughter behind with her grandparents. Anita, age 15, wrote ”We have left the house like criminals and left here those who have possession of our hearts.” Various writers have interpreted these circumstances differently but, whatever the reason for this strange departure, Anita spent the next 15 years in Boston and the East Coast, seemingly eager to return home, but continually disappointed in the hope. It is hard to imagine that her life was entirely happy, in spite of the steady growth of her family and the prosperity and social prominence the Robinsons and de la Guerras enjoyed.
Having borne seven children, and having witnessed from afar (and apparently mourned) the transition of her homeland from Mexican territory to American statehood, Anita finally returned to California in the summer of 1852. It is likely she had her daguerreotype portrait taken at this time, in San Francisco, although it could have been taken back east. Sadly, she lived just three more years in California, dying in Los Angeles in November 1855, a few weeks after giving birth to a son. She is buried at Mission Santa Barbara.
A study of Anita’s life was published by Michele Brewster in the Southern California Quarterly in 2020 (v.102 no. 2, pg. 101-42) . Read more of her story!
With such a fascinating and relatively well-documented life, we’re thrilled to have Anita’s beautiful portrait here at Bancroft. It joins other de la Guerra family portraits, as well as numerous papers related to the family, including “Documentos para la historia de California” (BANC MSS C-B 59-65) by her father, José de la Guerra y Noriega.
Two of Anita’s sisters had “testimonias” recorded by H.H. Bancroft and his staff; one from Doña Teresa de la Guerra de Hartnell (BANC MSS C-E 67) and another from Angustias de la Guerra de Ord (BANC MSS C-D 134).
Anita’s daguerreotype itself presents an interesting conundrum and history. The photographer is unknown, as is common with daguerreotypes. The portrait has been known over the years because later copies exist in several historical collections, including the California Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Bancroft Library’s own Portrait File.
The daguerreotype acquired last Fall was owned for some decades by a collector. When he acquired it, it was unidentified. Later he encountered a reproduction of it in a historical publication, and thus had the identification of the sitter. Each of the known copies is somewhat different from the others. In her article, Brewster reproduces the copy from the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is a paper print on a carte de visite mount bearing the imprint of San Francisco photographer William Shew, at 115 Kearny Street.
Based on this information, Brewster attributed the portrait to Shew; however, Shew is merely the copy photographer. A daguerreotype, largely out of use by the 1860s, is a unique original, not printed from a negative, so only one exists unless it is copied by camera. The carte de visite format was not in widespread use until the 1860s, and Shew was not at the Kearny address until the 1872-1879 period. So the photographer remains unidentified.
Another puzzle is posed by the early 20th century reproductions in the Bancroft Portrait File and the California Historical Society, which appear identical. These copies present a less closely cropped pose than the original daguerreotype, which is perplexing! Anita’s lap and hands are visible in the copies, but not in the daguerreotype. Although the bottom of the daguerreotype plate is obscured by its brass mat, there is not enough room at the lower edge to include these details.
How could a copy contain more image area than the original? Upon reflection, two possibilities come to mind:
1) the daguerreotype was copied in the 19th century and photographically enlarged, then re-touched or painted over to yield a larger portrait that included her lap and hand, added by an artist. This reproduction was later photographed to produce the copies in the Portrait File and CHS.
or,
2) the original daguerreotype included her lap and hand, and it was re-daguerreotyped for family members in the 1850s, perhaps near the time of Anita’s 1855 death. When the copy daguerreotypes were made, they were composed more tightly in on the sitter, omitting the lap and hands. The newly acquired Bancroft daguerreotype could be a copy of a still earlier plate – and this earlier plate could be the source of the later paper copy in the Portrait file.
This will likely remain a mystery until other variants of this portrait surface. Are there other versions of this portrait of Anita de la Guerra de Robinson to be revealed?
Reference
Brewster, Michele M. “A Californiana in Two Worlds: Anita de La Guerra Robinson, 1821–1855.” Southern California Quarterly 102, no. 2 (2020): 101–42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27085996.
Sign up for the Oral History Center’s Advanced Institute (August 5–9)
The UC Berkeley Oral History Center is pleased to announce that applications are open for the 2024 Advanced Institute!
The OHC is offering online versions of our educational programs again this year.
Advanced Institute: M–F, August 5–9, 8:30 a.m.–2 p.m., via Zoom
We are now accepting applications for our 2024 Advanced Institute on a rolling basis. Please apply early, as spots fill quickly.
The Oral History Center is offering a virtual version of our one-week Advanced Institute on the methodology, theory, and practice of oral history. This will take place Aug. 5-9, 2024.
The institute is designed for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, university faculty, independent scholars, and museum and community-based historians who are engaged in oral history work. The goal of the institute is to strengthen the ability of its participants to conduct research-focused interviews and to consider special characteristics of interviews as historical evidence in a rigorous academic environment.
We ask that applicants have a project in mind that they would like to workshop during the week. All participants are required to attend small daily breakout groups in which they will workshop projects.
In the sessions, we will devote particular attention to how oral history interviews can broaden and deepen historical interpretation situated within contemporary discussions of history, subjectivity, memory, and memoir.
Apply for the Advanced Institute.
Overview of the week
The institute is structured around the life cycle of an interview. Each day will focus on a component of the interview, including foundational aspects of oral history, project conceptualization, the interview itself, analytic and interpretive strategies, and research presentation and dissemination.
Instruction will take place online tentatively from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time, with breaks woven in. There will be three sessions a day: two seminar sessions and a workshop. Seminars will cover oral history theory, legal and ethical issues, project planning, oral history and the audience, anatomy of an interview, editing, fundraising, and analysis and presentation. During workshops, participants will work throughout the week in small groups, led by faculty, to develop and refine their projects.
Participants will be provided with a resource packet that includes a reader, contact information, and supplemental resources. These resources will be made available electronically prior to the institute, along with the schedule.
Applications and cost
The cost of the institute is $600. We are offering a limited number of participants a discounted tuition of $300 for students, independent scholars, or those experiencing financial hardship. If you would like to apply for discounted tuition, please indicate this on your application form and we will send you more information.
Please note that the OHC is a soft-money research office of the university, and as such receives precious little state funding. Therefore, it is necessary that this educational initiative be a self-funding program. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide financial assistance to participants other than our limited number of scholarships. We encourage you to check in with your home institutions about financial assistance; in the past we have found that many programs have budgets to help underwrite some of the costs associated with attendance. We will provide receipts and certificates of completion as required for reimbursement.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early, as spots fill up quickly.
Questions
Please contact Shanna Farrell (sfarrell@library.berkeley.edu) with any questions.
About the Oral History Center
UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center, or the OHC, is one of the oldest oral history programs in the world. We produce carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed oral histories and interpretive materials for the widest possible use. Since 1953 we have been preserving voices of people from all walks of life, with varying perspectives, experiences, pursuits, and backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.
The Bancroft Library’s San Francisco Examiner photograph archive
As part of the UC Berkeley University Library’s ongoing commitment to make all our collections easier to use, reuse, and publish from, we are excited to announce that we have just eliminated licensing hurdles for use of over 5 million photographs taken by San Francisco Examiner staff photographers in our Fang family San Francisco examiner photograph archive negative files, BANC PIC 2006.029–NEG, and Fang family San Francisco examiner photograph archive photographic print files, BANC PIC 2006.029–PIC.
Every photograph within these photographic print and negative collections that were taken by an SF Examiner staff photographer are now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). This means that anyone around the world can incorporate these photos into papers, projects, and productions—even commercial ones—without ever getting further permission or another license from us.
What is the San Francisco Examiner collection?
The SF Examiner has been published since 1863, and continues to be one of The City’s daily newspapers. It was acquired by George Hearst in 1880 and given to his son, William Randolph Hearst, in 1887. It was the founding cornerstone of the Hearst media empire, and remained part of the Hearst Corporation’s holdings until it was sold, in 2000, to the Fang family of San Francisco. In 2006 the Examiner’s photo morgue, totaling over 5 million individual images, was donated to The Bancroft Library by the Fang family’s successors, the SF Newspaper Company, LLC.
Along with the gift of negatives and photographic prints, the copyright to all photographs taken by SF Examiner staff photographers was transferred to the UC Regents, to be managed by UC Berkeley Library. However, the copyright to works (mainly in the form of photographic prints) that appear in the collection that were not created by SF Examiner staff was not part of the copyright transfer to the University. Copyright to any works not taken by SF Examiner staff is presumed to rest with the originating agency or photographer. The Library maintains a list of known SF Examiner staff photographers and can assist in making identification of particular photographs until the metadata has been updated.
What has changed about the collection?
Although people did not previously need the UC Regents’ permission (sometimes called a “license”) to make fair uses of our SF Examiner photograph archive, because of the progressive permissions policy we created, prior to January 2024 people did need a license to reuse these works if their intended use exceeded fair use. As a result, hundreds of book publishers, journals, and film-makers sought licenses from the Library each year to publish our Examiner photos.
The UC Berkeley Library recognized this as an unnecessary barrier for research and scholarship, and has now exercised its authority on behalf of the UC Regents to freely license the SF Examiner photographs in our collection that were taken by staff photographers under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). This license is designed for maximum dissemination and use of the materials.
How to use SF Examiner collection photographs
Now that the photographs by SF Examiner staff photographers have a CC BY license applied to them, no additional permission or license from the UC Regents or anyone else is needed to use these works, even if you are using the work for commercial purposes. No fees will be charged, and no additional paperwork is necessary from us for you to proceed with your use.
Making your usage even easier is the fact that over 22,000 of these negative strips have been digitized and made available via the Library’s Digital Collections Site, and the finding aid for the prints and negatives have more information about the photographs that have not yet been digitized.
The CC BY license does require attribution to the copyright owner, which in this case is the UC Regents. Researchers are asked to attribute use of reproductions subject to this policy as follows, or in accordance with discipline-specific standards:
Fang family San Francisco Examiner photograph archive, © The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. This work is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
One final note on usage: While the SF Examiner Collection now carries a CC BY license, this does not mean that other federal or state laws or contractual agreements do not apply to their use and distribution. For instance, there may be sensitive material protected by privacy laws, or intended uses that might fall under state rights of publicity. It is the researcher’s responsibility to assess permissible uses under all other laws and conditions. Please see our Permissions Policy for more information.
Other Library collections with a CC BY license
The Fang family San Francisco Examiner photograph archive joins a number of other collections that the Library has opened under a CC BY license, including the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin. All of the collections that have had a CC BY license applied can be found on our Easy to Use Collections page.
Happy researching!
Bancroft Quarterly Processing News
The archivists of the Bancroft Library are pleased to announce that in the past quarter (October-December 2023) we opened the following Bancroft archival collections to researchers.
Manuscript and University Archives Collections:
Morris Goldstein papers (processed by Presley Hubschmitt)
ruth weiss papers (processed by Simi Best)
Robert A. Scalapino papers (processed by Lara Michels)
Elizabeth Rauscher papers (processed by Jessica Tai)
Lawrence Talbot papers (processed by Lara Michels and student processing assistant David Eick)
Walter S. Hertzmann collection on the Hertzmann and Koshland families (processed by Presley Hubschmitt)
Bush Street Synagogue Cultural Center records (processed by Presley Hubschmitt)
Erle Stanley Gardner papers (processed by Randy Brandt)
Mission Council on Redevelopment records (processed by Lara Michels and student processing assistant Malayna Chang)
Charles W. Leach correspondence (processed by Lara Michels)
Lynn Manning papers, additions (processed by Lara Michels)
Pictorial Collections/Items:
65 small collections and single items (approximately 6,119 items, total)
Lonnie H. Wilson Photograph Archive: over 1000 negatives documenting the William F. Knowland gubernatorial campaign of 1958 and the Republican and Democratic Party conventions of 1960 were processed and added to the existing finding aid.
Pictorial collections staff: James Eason, Chris McDonald, Lori Hines, Sara Ferguson, and Isabel Breskin.
Collections Currently in Process:
- Data Center records
- Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley records
- Patricia Buffler papers
- Nathan and Julia Hare papers
- Daisy Zamora papers
- Harriet Smith papers
- Barbara Oliver collection of theater materials
- Howard Besser papers
- Delmer Myers Brown papers
- Benjamin Swig papers and photographs
- Isabel Wiel family papers and photographs
Sign up for the Oral History Center’s Introductory Workshop (March 8)
The UC Berkeley Oral History Center is pleased to announce that applications are open for the 2024 Introductory Workshop!
The OHC is offering online versions of our educational programs again this year.
Introductory Workshop: Friday, March 8 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30.p.m. Pacific Time, via Zoom
The 2024 Introduction to Oral History Workshop will be held virtually via Zoom on Friday, March 8, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30.p.m. Pacific Time, with breaks woven in. Applications are now being accepted on a rolling basis. Please apply early, as spots fill up quickly.
Apply for the Introductory Workshop.
This workshop is designed for people who are interested in an introduction to the basic practice of oral history and in learning best practices. The workshop serves as a companion to our more in-depth Advanced Oral History Summer Institute held in August.
The workshop focuses on the foundational elements of oral history, including methodology and ethics, practice, and recording. It will be taught by our seasoned oral historians and include hands-on practice exercises. Everyone is welcome to attend the workshop. Prior attendees have included community-based historians, teachers, genealogists, public historians, and students in college or graduate school.
Tuition is $150. We are offering a limited number of participants a discounted tuition of $75 for students, independent scholars, or those experiencing financial hardship. If you would like to apply for discounted tuition, please indicate this on your application form and we will send you more information. Please note that the OHC is a soft-money research office of the university, and as such receives precious little state funding. Therefore, it is necessary that this educational initiative be a self-funding program. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide financial assistance to participants other than our limited number of scholarships. We encourage you to check in with your home institutions about financial assistance; in the past we have found that many programs have budgets to help underwrite some of the costs associated with attendance. We will provide receipts and certificates of completion as required for reimbursement.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early, as spots fill up quickly.
If you have specific questions, please contact Shanna Farrell (sfarrell@library.berkeley.edu)
About the Oral History Center
UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center, or the OHC, is one of the oldest oral history programs in the world. We produce carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed oral histories and interpretive materials for the widest possible use. Since 1953 we have been preserving voices of people from all walks of life, with varying perspectives, experiences, pursuits, and backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.