 Welcome to the Know Your Records program. My name is Andrea Matney, and as the events coordinator, please allow me to provide instructions and a brief introduction. The Know Your Records program provides information on how to access and conduct research using U.S. federal government records held at the National Archives. Please join the conversation, participate with the presenter and other audience members during the session's premiere time. Here's how to engage in live chat. You can ask questions via chat by first logging into YouTube. Continue to watch chat because the speaker will answer your questions there in the chat. Type your questions in at any time. Please keep your questions on today's topic. In addition, please select Show More to find links to handouts and the events evaluation form. Now for the introduction. A presentation is entitled Found Recordings of World War II by Ashley Barringer. Ashley has worked at the National Archives since 2016. She is an archivist in the Moving Image and Sound Branch. Before that, she worked as a contractor for the National Park Service, processing, textual, photographic, and film materials. She holds an MLS and MA in History from the University of Maryland. Welcome, Ashley. I'm now turning the program over to you. Thank you so much, Andrea, and thanks to everyone who is watching for joining us today. I'm recording this presentation in Archives II in College Park, Maryland in the Moving Image and Sound Branch, henceforth abbreviated as RRSM. As Andrea said, I'm Ashley Barringer, and this image of soldiers hearing the news of the Japanese surrender from the radio, I think it really illustrates how important the radio was as a means of getting news during the World War II era. The public could, of course, get news from a newspaper or a newsreel, but radio arrived quickly and it arrived free, provided you owned the radio receiver, into American homes and homes worldwide. So this presentation is about recordings in the Moving Image and Sound Branch and not sound recordings across NARA as a whole, so you should get to know us a little better. I mentioned NARA as a whole because you can find sound recordings in various locations. For example, the FDR library holds a large number of fireside chats, some of which we also have. If sound recordings appear in other divisions' holdings, we can help facilitate access to these materials, but the bulk of sound holdings are with us. This branch has some major operational differences from those that contain paper-based materials in that we never serve film or sound originals. Unlike sexual records, including photographs or cartographic materials, our records require the use of a machine with moving parts. In that case, there's so much more potential for tearing, unwinding, scratching, or accidentally erasing, as in the case of videotapes. That's why we have the PIR system. The P are the long-term preservation copies. These Bayer may not be the original format as received from the agency, so not all analog material are suitable for long-term preservation, so we might create our own preservation copy in that case to supplement an unstable original. The I, our intermediate copy, is for duplication. For example, digitization in our audio lab or by a vendor. R copies are for on-site or remote reference. They can be in any format. For on-site, we often have reel-to-reel tape, stills, and audio cassettes and CDs. For remote reference, you receive an MP3 from us. There are also a few other ways in which we are different from other branches. RRSN maintains more donated materials than many other branches have. These include commercial recordings donated by companies that may or may not have transferred rights to the government. I'll say more about copyright issues with commercial materials near the end of this presentation. We also describe our holdings on the item level whenever possible. An item may be a single title, regardless of the number of reels, or a single reel that is a single asset, which in turn contains multiple or partial titles. In other words, there's not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between the physical item and a complete title. Each item has a local identifier and distinct following. Record group, series designator, and item number. This example 306 FDRA 135 is Rendezvous with Destiny, state of war message to Congress. Generally, local IDs are formatted with a dash between each part, but sometimes it's a period instead, and sometimes you'll see that the small letter A in the series designator has been dropped. I'll say some more about these variations in punctuation later, but please note that our catalog is very unforgiving about such minor differences. So I'd like to demonstrate some functions of searching for sound recordings in our catalog at this time. So we just saw the example of 306 FDRA 135. Now if we were going to search for that, in quotes, the exact phrase, very sadly we'll come up with no results because this is one of those cases where the small letter A has been dropped. Now we might have had no way of knowing that in advance, that that was the way this particular series is formatted. However, if you had the link to the series page, you can see here at the top local identifier for the series that in this case it does not have the small letter A and in turn you can search within this series for item 135. Now going back to the main page, I'd like to point to the most helpful way to search for a subject if you don't have a particular title in mind. So let's search for DGA. And now of course you get results from everywhere in our in all sorts of formats. Now this presentation focuses on RRSM so you might want to refine your results to be just those from our branch. If you go down to location of archival materials you'll see that the moving image and sound branch has in this case been abbreviated just as motion pictures. So click on motion pictures even though what we're looking for is audio recordings. Then in turn we'll want to refine the results to include just sound recordings so make that selection under type of materials. And now you have AUN results that's great. These are results from across all series. And a lot of these you'd be able to order through our vendor program or access in the research room in person. But suppose you're on a time crunch under a budget you're wondering what's already digitized and available in the catalog we can further refine to available to access online. And then we'll find certain results that are already available within MP3 to listen to in the catalog. It is important to understand the state of sound recording technology during this time as it determined what was recorded and what those recordings sound like. Most of the National Archives and Records Administration's World Court 2 audio recordings predates the common use of magnetic tape. They were captured on transcription discs in many different formats including those with the base of lacquer, metal, or glass. Many of these tapes were transferred to one quarter inch open reel tapes in the 1980s. It'll now it'll come as no surprise to learn that some of those formats especially glass records are incredibly fragile. This example from our ADC radio series has been taped together. Now that is not archival quality preservation practices that just nothing to make the record readable but it does guard against accidentally cutting your fingers as you pull it out of the sleeve. In recent years our digital falls that we've made of these sound recordings have been mostly made from the tapes that were created a couple of decades back rather than the disc originals. Let's continue talking about sound recording technologies for a bit. Now when you think about radio today you probably imagine what your car radio can receive. But broadcasting in the 1940s occurred across a wider variety of bandwidths than those that FCC today allows for radio use. Some radio broadcasts of the 1940s were on shortwave and could be heard across a much greater distances than today's AM and FM stations. Many of the foreign radio broadcasts and our holdings were recorded off the airwaves at monitoring stations in the United States using transcription discs. The most common form of battlefield radio communication remained Morse code although the war did see the first deployment of the HF that is very high frequency backpack radios that gained the nickname walkie talkies. Now it's important to remember this heavy use of Morse code when you're example looking at a photo of soldiers in this field transmitting by radio they're likely coding rather than talking. Now because creating sound recordings in the field was difficult most of our recordings are formal in some way and they include radio programs speeches and interrogations. For example you won't find many candid moments like you would in something like the Nixon White House tape tape recorders well it weren't tape recorders then transcription discs were not something you just left running. So the heart of this presentation is a tour through key series for researchers interested in this topic. This run through of series is obviously not exhaustive you might find relevant materials in any series but these are some great starting points. Now on these sides I have given the formal title of the series in the header and the local identifier appears beneath. Now I put this series first because it's really big and it's almost all available online and it's quite wide-ranging. This is the office of war information sound recordings relating to World War II 208 General A is told 1234 titles most are digitized and available online to listen to in the National Archives catalog. The majority of this collection is office of emergency management series such as three-thirds of a nation you can't do business with Hitler and victory of volunteers. It also contains speeches President Roosevelt's fireside chats and talks by military personnel. So let's take a listen to an example from the OWI series. This is Watson Davis reports on new electronic calculator at Harvard University broadcast in approximately August of 1945. The local identifier of this recording is 208.313. Now in this case the period stands for General A. We're moving away from using the period abbreviation to stand for General A as this can be quite confusing. Also in some cases of a small A at the end of the series designator may not appear. It stands for audio and it's something we have used to differentiate moving image and sound series. The usage of this has not been consistent so you will find the A is missing it some catalog descriptions and file names. It will take a lot of figuring to keep the war going and it'll take a lot of computing and figuring to do the things we want to do when the peace comes. So scientists are quite excited about a gigantic mathematical robot described as the world's greatest calculating machine which is going into war service of the United States Navy at Harvard University after its presentation to Harvard by the International Business Machines Corporation. Completely new in principle and unlike any calculator previously built this calculator is a result of two years of basic theory research followed by six years of design construction and testing. This automatic sequence control calculator as it's called was accepted at ceremonies by President James B. Conant of Harvard as the gift from the president of IBM Thomas J. Watson. For the present this new algebraic superbrain will be devoted to war problems but when the Navy no longer needs it it will explore vast fields in pure and applied mathematics and other sciences and produce answers to problems so intricate and so time consuming that they would have only very tedious solutions under other circumstances. The machine can add or subtract in a third of a second. One typical problem was solved by this machine in 19 hours whereas it took four expert girls three weeks to do the same work using ordinary office calculators. A steel frame 51 feet long and 8 feet high holds the calculator which consists of an interlocking panel of small gears, counters, switches, and control circuits all only a few inches in depth. 500 miles of wire with three million connections, 3,500 multiple pole relays with 35,000 contacts, 2,225 counters and 72 adding machines each with 23 significant numbers. All these are used in the machine. One of the problems scheduled for the machine when it returns to civilian use is the solution of the dynamic equations of the solar system never solved before because of their intricacy and the enormous time and manpower required. For the first time in medical history human ovarian eggs have been fertilized outside the bodies of human mothers and their development through the first two cell division stages observed under the microscope. Accomplishment of this difficult feat in experimental biology is reported from the Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Free Hospital for Women in Brookline, Massachusetts. Three successful fertilizations of human eggs in glass dishes have been performed. Two of these proceeding as far as the first cleavage or two cell stage of development and the third showing three cells. A sea mule or a harbor jeep, a new powerful tug for handling vessels in harbors or in inland waters is maneuverable, speedy, and easy to operate. It's a gasoline engine powered and has two five-foot propellers which receive 286 horsepower each. It's 40 feet long and 15 feet wide and has a draft of six feet. Precision plate glass, a glass for optical use which may be substituted in some installations for true optical glass is now made by newly developed mass production methods. In reality it's a fine plate glass with precise parallelism of its surfaces. Now I thought this radio broadcast was interesting because three of the four stories would go on to have a major impact on the future. So the one that didn't really turn out to be earth shaking was the tugboat. But the computer under discussion is very interesting. It is Harvard Mark I. It was used for the Manhattan Projects although that is obviously something that OWI could not have mentioned in 1940. The program also mentions in-vitro fertilization. Obviously this is something that has gone on to be a mainstream practice. And now the precision optical glass under discussion is the kind that would serve as for example the prism of a laser. We have several different voice of America series. VOA was first broadcast on February 1st, 1942. Armed Forces Radio Service was first broadcast on July 4th, 1943. So they both began service during the World War II era. Unfortunately the production libraries that these agencies sent to NARA mostly post-Jade the war. VOA did collect five series of World War II related materials around the themes of FDR, DJ Day, E-Day, D-Day and World War II miscellaneous. These five groupings were archival resources that they retained for their own use. Of these series FDR is largest at 168 items. The Army General Staff Council's sound recordings relating to World War II operations has a local identifier 165 General A. This eclectic series of 280 titles includes Radio Luxemburg, which was a U.S. operation that broadcasts in German from Luxemburg, but pretending to be broadcasting from within Germany. It includes subject interviews conducted by the Military Intelligence Service and also hearings of the Woodchirm Committee on compulsory military training. The Woodchirm Committee in 1945 investigated the idea of one year of compulsory military training for all 18-year-old males. Obviously this did not come to pass. 165 General A is one of several series in this presentation which are not described at the item level in the catalog. Audio preservation binders containing this information can be found in our research room in College Park, Maryland. Preservation binders are not quite finding it, but they do indicate what physical copies we have of titles and some contain more extensive description descriptive information than others. Although these mostly have been digitized they're not uploaded to the catalog in full. However we will send PDFs of relevant volumes to researchers upon request. Department of the Interior sound recordings relating to conservation circa 1939 to 1946, 48 General A. This is a good example of why you shouldn't judge the relevancy of a series by its originating agency. As the date range suggests the area of conservation covered in these recordings is wartime resources such as metals and rubber. The department also collected radio recordings unrelated to their mission including morale talks by pilots and army bands music. And I always like it when our moving image and sound recordings intersect. This still is from a USIA library stock shot series and it depicts a scrap iron drive during the war. This slide covers the general subject of our enemies. We have several series of German, Italian and Japanese material that was either recorded on transcriptive discs off the airways or seized after the war for investigative purposes. 242 General A is sound recordings of speeches of access leaders and other propaganda material. This series also is not itemized in the catalog. As a very large series we have a good long title list that is available in the preservation binder. This series consists of Italian and German materials that were collected for war crimes trials but never submitted as evidence. 131 General A contains similar Nazi related materials seized from the German American Bund. These recordings are not exclusively in foreign languages just as we broadcast at the enemy in their own languages they broadcast the same back to us. The German American Bund which I mentioned was a US based organization directly affiliated with the Nazi party and they maintains their own collection of Nazi sound recordings. 262 General A, sound recordings of shortwave broadcasts is another non-itemized series. This one includes Italian, German and Japanese recordings. It also contains some broadcasts from Americans and allies. These were monitored broadcasts recorded off the airwaves and we didn't focus exclusively on enemy propaganda but also captured some on the allied side as well. The subject of treason investigations is quite interesting. These two series from the FBI are related to investigations of quote, treasonable utterances, end quote. Class 61 treason recordings of foreign radio broadcasts can be found in 65 TRA and 65 T-R-F-A. They were collected by the FBI during investigations of Aiva Tagore Zekino, better known as Tokyo Rose, John David Provu and Herbert Erasmus Moy. Of the two T-R-F-A is considerably larger at 110 titles. Aiva Tagore Zekino was an American citizen who was stranded in Japan at the start of the war and became a DJ for Radio Tokyo. She served six years for treason even though she rarely commented upon the war during her broadcasts. She mostly just introduced popular music. Gerald Ford pardoned her. John David Provu was a POW suspected of collaborating with the Japanese after he was captured. His conviction for treason was ultimately overturned. Unlike the other two, Herbert Erasmus Moy was definitely a hardcore pro-Japanese ideologue. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and he broadcasts access propaganda from a German station in Shanghai. An OSS report from November 1945 reported his suicide. There is also a series related exclusively to Tokyo Rose and 118 General A. Most of the series has been digitized and is available in the catalog. These recordings were submitted as evidence in United States versus Aiva Tagino. Now I've mentioned monitored and recorded off the air recordings previously but these are definitely examples in which there's pretty bad sound quality as they were recorded off of shortwave radio stations. Here is a photo of the transcription discs which I was just talking about. Now on the transcriptionist's note you can see a sort of contact print from where it was pressed against the disc for many years. These notes from the transcriptionists are generally quite short they basically just serve as a label but we'll see some more useful textual records later. Several different series relate to World War II war crimes trials. The big one is 238 General A. This is a group of trials that have come to be known as the Nuremberg trials. There are almost 4,000 digital recordings available in the catalog from this series. Obviously this is an enormous number of recordings from a quite complex series of multilingual trials. You see in the film footage of the trials everyone's wearing the headphones because they're simultaneous interpreting occurring. Our items have a title and a date but even better you can do full text searches of the trial transcripts which have been uploaded to various places online. Our catalog links to the Avalon Project of Yale Law School where you can browse and search testimony and other documents that were spoken before or presented to the court. We also have extensive moving image coverage of the trials as this still suggests. Subsequent war crimes trials can be found in 238 STIA although these are mostly not digitized. Now I am going to feature two of our donated collections. The Milo Ryan collection totals 4,221 titles. Milo Ryan was a professor of communications at the University of Washington who in the late 1950s discovered that CBS's affiliate in Seattle KIRO had a complete set of recordings of CBS's news coverage of the war years. So the short chain of custody is KIRO gave the physical disks but not rights to their content to the University of Washington. The University of Washington in turn gave the physical disks to us but these disks have all been digitized and the University of Washington facilitates access on site for research purposes only. If you obtain permission directly from CBS you can order digital copies of these recordings through NARA's contracted vendor order system. There is a contacts list on our website where you can identify whom to contact for various broadcast sources. The Milo Ryan collection is also as an example of a series in which we have detailed logs and indices in paper form only at this time. Milo Ryan also published his own book about this collection of recordings. The John R. Hickman audio collection contains some similar content. It contains 300 titles. It was donated by a vintage audio collector John R. Hickman who worked at DC's public broadcasting radio station WAMU. It includes government programs such as This Is Our America and This Is War but also programs created by the Office of Facts and Figures. It includes commercial recordings as well including many materials from the now defunct mutual radio network and it also contains some post-war material. There are two series I would like to point out related to the theme of Japanese American internment. This photograph from our sales branch depicts the Hart Mountain Relocation Center and it shows that the radio repair shop. Some of the internees in these camps did have radios although the captions for the photograph notes that some parts were in short supply. Residents at the Minidoka Center even broadcast their own radio program. To attend General A is sound recordings relating to the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. It consists of 14 recordings that were created during the war including interviews and performances. 220 CWRICA is sound recordings relating to U.S. relocation and internment of Japanese American and Aleutian civilians. This is from a reparations study in the 1980s that contains 18 post-war recordings. It includes testimony from the survivors of the camps. Now often when looking at a newsreel or another film from World War II you'll see a person speaking into a microphone and on that microphone is a broadcast network's call slang. This is just one way of saying that we have a lot of filmed footage of radio operators radio performers and radio listeners. I'm going to see that broadcast call sign on the microphone. It likely means this was something that was being sent out over the radio. Our Army Navy screen magazine film series repeatedly features filmed radio shows that were popular with troops. 111 A&S M30 features the black themed show Jubilee. Other episodes feature Avin and Costello and Bob Hope. They could also include private snafu cartoons and war news. Other filmed radio shows that we have include Toscanini, Pym of the Nations and Armed Forces Network Story which is about the armed forces radio network. Now let's watch a few minutes of Jubilee. This is pretty fun. It features Lena Horne the legendary singer actress activist and Eddie Anderson who played the valet Rochester on the Jack Benny program which later moved from radio to television. Mother says it's in the groove. Daddy says it's hot. Backwards it spells elaboos. Now brethren what have you got? You've got Jubilee. An avalanche of fan mail from all fronts and outposts testifies to the popularity of Jubilee. This 30-minute radio show is one of 106 recorded programs shipped overseas each week by the Armed Forces Radio Service from headquarters at Los Angeles. You said sacks in your khaki kilts and you swingy salts on your pewter scooters batten down your GI pork pies and now here's your master of ceremonies Jubilee sweater boy Ernie Bubbles Whitman. Thank you. Thank you devotees of the lymph logo. With your permission I'd like to do a few imitations. First as a familiar fellow we've all seen standing in track number five just before the 20th century pulled out of Chicago for New York and he goes something like this. Coming mother. That's my big fat soul. How are you Ross? Fine Ernie but I have a little problem. I brought a chick with me tonight. I wonder if I one of you could help me out. Well I'll be glad to take off your hands son. Just a minute big boy that's not my problem. What I want to know is should I bring her into the studio and take a chance on Luzner or leave her out in the hall and likewise. Well then for all means bring this girl in. Okay come on in honey. Fellas here's Lena Horne. How about us telling everybody about consequences. Okay here it boys. Life's full of consequence that old devil consequence he takes all the privilege out of fun. When you've got the candle lit at both ends the scandal it creates always keeps you on the road. Just when you're weakening fate sends the deacon in. Crash and your passion worth an hour's then comes the consequence that old devil consequence flings you back with all. Consequence but who's scared of consequence. Let's sip the honey while it's sweet. Messin' round but you is digressin' round while I'm tossin' nature at your feet. A few points related to copyright issues in this presentation but this is a very important topic and it deserves a general overview. Government works are generally not eligible for copyright protection but this does not mean that all their holdings are in the public domain. Rights issues appear not only in donated collections but in federal records. This screenshot from our catalog shows a use note from the Army Hour series. This was a program sponsored by the Army but it aired on NBC and featured commercial artists. Even programs that did not originate on an American commercial broadcasting network may contain popular music that being Crosby's song your grandfather loved is probably not in the public domain. Access restrictions such as FOIA exemptions generally do not affect our World War II era sound recordings. Most are available and open to the public. However, use restrictions on reproduction or distribution may apply. Copyright may affect the use of our records but not your ability to access records in the research room. Some donated collections may require permission as imposed by the donor deed of agreement. Permissions must be obtained from the copyright holder prior to reproduction. These use restrictions also affect our branch's ability to place digital recordings in the online catalog. TOAway Generally contains some network radio dramas that have been withheld. These recordings are still available to listen to for research purposes in our research room. If you're looking more information on the difficult topic of rights issues, let's move on to the final slide. It's links and contact us. Our rights page contains many helpful links with information on copyright including our use statement and links to contacts who you might need to contact for permission. We also have a page about our vendor order reproduction system. This is how you can order high resolution copies of RRSM recordings. If you're interested in visiting us to access analog reference copies of any of the sound recordings mentioned in today's presentation, you can complete your training, register as a researcher, and reserve a day to visit all online. It's probably best to inquire first about the availability of reference copies in the room. We also recommend emailing us if you need help getting started with the vendor order system, as this is not always intuitive. For these questions or any other questions, please email mopixmopix.com. Ashley, thank you so much for your presentation and fantastic information. Please know we plan future programs based on your feedback. Would you please take a minute to complete our short online evaluation forms? So thank you again for watching. This ends the lecture portion of the broadcast, but we will continue to take your questions about today's topic in chat. If we do not get to your question, please send us an email. Note that the presentation's video recording will remain available on the YouTube page and our website. Although this concludes the video portion of the broadcast, we will continue to take your questions in chat for another 10 minutes. Please stay if you have questions. Thank you for joining us for today's presentation.