The Segregated Japanese American Military Units of World War II: Access to Veteran Moving Image Oral Histories

FAIN: PW-253761-17

Go For Broke National Education Center (Los Angeles, CA 90012-3901)
Summer Espinoza (Project Director: July 2016 to June 2017)
Linh Gavin Do (Project Director: June 2017 to March 2021)

The digitization and free online accessibility of 800 video oral history interviews of veterans of Japanese American military units in World War II.

This is an 18-month project for digitization and segment level indexing of 800 moving image oral history interviews of Japanese American veterans who served in segregated units during World War II, while many had families imprisoned in War Relocation Authority incarceration camps. The broadcast-quality interviews, collected across the US beginning in 1998, capture the experiences of JA veterans who served throughout the European and Pacific Theaters. The videotapes will be digitized to archival standards at the University of Southern California Digital Repository. GFB has implemented a highly-searchable web-based digital platform that integrates University of Kentucky's Oral History Metadata Synchronizer and open source Omeka web publishing platform. Segment level indexing will allow researchers to search by topic and keyword and be connected to specific moments in an interview, thus eliminating research time sitting through playback to locate relevant video segments.

Associated Products

Victor Izui Oral History Interview (Web Resource)
Title: Victor Izui Oral History Interview
Author: Go For Broke National Education Center
Abstract: The interview with Victor Izui was recorded in 1999 and the item was cataloged sooner, but the indexing work (one of the main aspects of the project) was completed in 2018. The website this is hosted on was created through an earlier project, but this is an example of the indexing work that is available to the public because of NEH funding with this project
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://ndajams.omeka.net/collections/show/368
Primary URL Description: The URL leads to the collection of interview segments with Victor Izui, whose interview was indexed due to funding from NEH

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