World War II series, 1936-2011.
(Document/manuscript/pamphlet/archival material)

Arrangement: alphabetical by surname.

Materials housed in the Special Collections Division of the Main Library, Nashville Public Library.

Disclaimer on Veterans History Project Collection Materials - (Historical Accuracy and Reliability in Personal Accounts): The Library of Congress and the Nashville Public Library does not verify the accuracy of the accounts described herein by participants in the Veterans History Project. Individual stories are voluntarily submitted to the Veterans History Project and are placed in the Library's permanent collections as received. These histories are the personal recollections and perspectives of participating individuals and are not intended as a substitute for an official record of the federal government or of military service.

Individuals and institutions documented in this series (as of January 2012) include: James M. Adams; Charles Edward Adwell; Lawrence N. Adwell; Ben Cooper Alexander; Herchel Ford (Buddy) Alexander; William Harbour Alexander; Wilson Carrington Alexander; James Hallie Allen; Harold A. Anderson; Arthur R. Arnold; Jerry Atkinson; Yvonne (Cornu) Balls; Thomas Marshall Barnes; Raymond C. Barnett; Roger Baskette; Pearlene Nicholson Earsary Bell; Robert Berg; David Wenning Bessire; Eleanor Bailey Blackman; Herman Carlton Blanton; Laccie Blevins; Harry Stanley Blum Jr.; Al Borgman; Norbert A. Borck; Sophie Kneidinger Brake; Samuel Brannon; Harrison Briggs; Mildred Kindred Bright; Reuben Brinton; Oscar Brooks; John Pope Brown; Betty Jane Marker Buckspan; Alice Martin Huffman Bugel; Rodney R. Burns; James Campbell; James Carlew; Fred Carnahan; Edmund F. Carroll; James W. Chatham; Ewing L. Chumney; City Road Methodist Church, Hayes Young Adult Class, Madison, Tenn.; Alpha Clark; Alva Dixon (A. D.) Clark; Charley Clark; Derald Gene Clark; Harold W. Clark; Ray Clark; Charles M. Clunan; Clay Coble; Bill Colsher; James M. Conlin; Victor Cooley; Johnnie Corbitt; Mozelle (Adams) Core; Bill Corlew; Orrie Couch Jr.; Bob Craig; Ben Donald Cunningham; Robert Murray Cunningham; John William Currey;

Dorothy Gibbs Dalton-McMahon; Allan D. Davis; Lenna C. Davis; Mary Elizabeth Brannon Davis; Verner (Red) Dean; Martha Maxwell Dickinson Decker; Ward DeWitt; William Dick; Allen Diefendorf; Wilfred E. Dillard, Sr.; Bill Dillon; Mel Dodson; John Donofiro; Ann Gardner Doyle; Thomas Joseph Doyle; Margaret Gooch Duffy; Ernest L. (Monk) Edwards; Bill Emerson; Ralph Erickson; Tom Ervin; Allen Eskind; Leland Estes; Andrew G. Ezell; Ernest Farmer; Hanson (Bud) Farmer; Emmett Hine Fletcher; Corinne W. Forbes; W. Francis Forbes; Gilbert Fox; John Frase; Fannie E. Thomas Frierson; T. Grady Gallant; Ted George; Paul Gomer; Willis Spragins "Bill" Graham; Thomas Graves; Olive Bilby Greenwood; Laurence Grossman;

Mel Hacker; Charles Edward Hailey; Arthur A. Hall; James Leo Harper; Thomas Harrison; Joe P. Harton; Wyeth (Slim) Hartwell; James Havron; Samuel M. Hayden; E. Wallace Haynes; Glenn Dixon "Dick" Henderson; John Bernice "J.B." Henderson, Jr.; Audrey Duffield Henry; Ann Stahlman Hill; Floyd Melvin Hooper; Aaron Clyde Hopper; Jacqueline Forman Stephens Horridge; Raymond G. Houle; Joseph T. Howell; Harry J. Howes; Bill Hughes; Rob Roy Hunt; Sylvia Risman Hyman; Charles P. Jackson; Rebecca Alma Bonham Landers Jennings; Leslie Dorris Kelly; Warren King; Patricia Knapp; James R. Ladd; Eugene Lampley; Walter R. Lee; Robert Allan Leftwich; Morris Levine; Arthur Eugene (Gene) Lomax; Lewis Lynch;

Frank T. McCoy, Jr.; Richard Owen Macdonald; Donald W. McGehee; John J. McGonagle; Charles E. McGruder; Ina May McIntire; Omen Kendrick McIntire; Otis McKeehen; Charles O. McNish; Jessie Wallace McNutt; Edna McPherson; Robert Allen Macon; Paul Madden; Earl Martin; George R. Martin; John W. Martin; William Mikel; Cecil Moody; John E. Morgan; Bruce Mosher; Hugh Mott; James Neese; Lawrence Nickell; Andromedia (Andy) Bagwell Noel; Richard Norvell; Edward E. O'Connor Jr.; Joseph R. O'Donnell; John Edward Parchman; Vince Patterson; Sam Pearsall; George Graham Perry, Jr.; Donald Oliver Peterson; Morris Phelps; Bill Porter; Kenneth Richard Powell; Myrtle Qualls-Wulf;

Alvin H. Raff; Dorothy Richards Rand; Thurman Randolph; Rubin Ratkin; Robert Ray; Thomas Ray; Stanley Renas; Thomas S. Richards; Bob Richardson; Ann Stevens Roberts; William Roberts; Ernest Hine Rolston; John Albert Rolston; Harry Alan Rosenberger; Eric Rosenfeld; Kenneth L. Ross; Bob Rourke; Cora Roxas; David Rutherford; Alfred Harvey Sanders; Harold W. Seymore; Gordon Shivas; Lucille Thompson Show; Ruth Skinner; Robert W. Smartt Jr.; Robert M. Smothermon; Thomas William Southall; Mary Spear Stamps; Elise Steiner; Enoch Stephenson; Paul Stevens; David Marshall Stewart; Ross Taggart; Lemuel Tanksley; John Thoman; Herman Thompson; Joe Thompson Jr.; Tom Tisdale; Marie Tootle; James Knox Trigg; Kathryn (Kitty) Neese Tune;

John Vandercook, NBC radio; David Lee Vincent; Lillard Waddle; Russell Walther; LaVergne R. Ware; Christine Steele Wasson; Irving Waugh; Lorin Lee Waugh; William W. Wells; George Charles Westover; William R. Wilcox; Harry Williams; Robert Yazzie; Thomas Zerfoss.

In library use only. Available by appointment.

Scope and content: Materials include letters, memoirs, scrapbooks, unit histories and unit newsletters, photographs, oral interviews and transcripts, maps, and publications. These materials include some photocopies. The World War II Series of the Veterans History Project Collection emphasizes the participation of Nashville area citizens in the war effort, in both military and civilian capacities. Some materials acquired early in the project came from several areas outside of Davidson County, including Columbia, Oak Ridge, Lewisburg, and Jackson.

The World War II Series of the Veterans History Project is especially strong in photographs and other materials which document the stories of Nashvillians who served in the Army Air Forces, in all major theatres of operation. These include the Joe Thompson Jr. Papers; the Morris Levine Papers; the Edward E. O'Connor Jr. Papers; and the Floyd Melvin Hooper Snapshots. In addition to the large quantity of Army Air Force materials, substantial photographic holdings also include the Victor Cooley Snapshots (Coast Guard) and the John Edwin Parchman Snapshots (1930s Army). All of these subseries are further detailed in separate catalog entries.

Two films are included in the series and are also detailed in separate catalog records: Sonic Deception, a training film about the use of sound effects to mislead enemy forces; and film footage taken by William W. Dick while serving in Europe with the 745th Tank Battalion.

Other sizable portions of the World War II Series include letters from Jessie Wallace McNutt, who served in the Army as a dietician with the 100th General Hospital and the 77th Evacuation Hospital in Europe. She wrote her mother often while overseas, where she was stationed in England, France, Belgium and Germany, and was transferred to a hospital near the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Her letters are detailed and provide a vivid description of life overseas as a woman in military service from 1944 to 1945. Her oral history interview adds perspective on her experiences, and provides a contrast to the immediacy of her letters. Some details about her service, like her journey towards the front during the Battle of the Bulge, and a close call there, are included only in her interview.

Letters by James H. Neese, which he wrote to his parents and brother in Nashville, tell about his experiences in the Army infantry serving in Africa and Italy from 1943 to 1945. His letters are supplemented by an oral history interview.

Nine newsletters published by the Hayes Young Adult Sunday School Class of the City Road Chapel Methodist Church in Madison, Tenn. begin in late 1942 and conclude in the fall of 1945. Often running over ten pages per issue, they contain church news, information about church members serving in the military, jokes, inspirational writings, and similar content. They reveal the support of this group for the men and women of the armed forces during World War II, and demonstrate church involvement on the homefront. Edward E. O'Connor Jr. and his wife Loraine attended this church, and their names are often mentioned.

A large collection of approximately 300 letters written by Willis Spragins "Bil" Graham to his wife, Katherine, of Memphis, Tenn. tell the story of Bill's deployment to New Delhi, India, working in public relations in the Army Air Corps. Before he was sent overseas, Graham's first duty sent him to Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he wrote about the Women's Army Corps and observed visits from Col. Oveta Culp Hobby and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942. After reassignment to Memphis, for a short time in Mar. 1944, he was in Jackson, Tenn. Then he was sent to Greensboro, North Carolina (June-Sept. 1944) in preparation for his overseas assignment. As a journalist, Graham had both the time and talent to write lengthy, detailed letters home, and they are a rich resource about life in the China, Burma, India (CBI) theater. Although specific to his own experiences in India, Graham's letters also serve as a window on popular culture in the World War II American army. In addition, through his responses to his wife's letters, the reader can also gain a sense of conditions and issues on the homefront, back in Memphis. His later letters cover such subjects as the death of President Roosevelt; the atomic bombing of Japan; VE and VJ Days; and the signs of political instability in several Asian countries. At one point, he even predicts an atomic Third World War due to the political and military conditions at the close of World War II. Katherine Graham published many excerpts from Bill's letters in 2006 in a book entitled: "Til We Meet Again: A Soldier's Love Letters from India."

In addition to these sizable holdings, over 150 oral history interviews are also part of this series. Particularly notable among these are interviews with Hugh Mott, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions to defuse German explosives on the last intact bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen; Dorothy Richards Rand who was a member of the Women's Army Corps, serving at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF); Joseph O'Donnell, a Marine Corps photographer who took photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just weeks after the atomic bombs were detonated, and who was still suffering from radiation exposure at the time of his interview in 2003; and Fitzgerald "Jerry" Atkinson, who served with the Marine Corps on Okinawa, was awarded the Navy Cross, and sustained so many wounds that he was nicknamed, "The Sieve."

Other interviews, too numerous to enumerate here, include accounts from prisoners of war, concentration camp liberators, women in the miltary, volunteers with the American Red Cross and other service organizations, front-line infantrymen, individuals in support, supply and logistics, medical services, and a wide variety of military occupations, covering virtually all theaters and branches of service. The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest in late 1944 is especially well-represented in this portion of the collection, as are a variety of activities in the China-Burma-India theater of service. Additional details about all interviews in the Veterans History Project collection are provided in the "Interview Summaries" finding aid. A large quantity of other material including memoirs, photographs, manuscripts and similar items document many other veterans. A detailed separate finding aid serves as an index to the World War II series of the Veterans History Project collection, enabling a researcher to identify those participants in the project who served in certain units, in certain locations, or saw action in particular battles.

Cite as: [name of individual, folder no.], World War II Series, Veterans History Project Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library.

Some items may be protected by copyright or donor restriction.

Negatives,Staff approval required for access.

Numerous donors contributed to this project.

Some participants in this project also participated in the Tennessee World War II Veterans Survey Project (Record Group 237), housed at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Vast majority of materials are in English. Some individual items may include portions in Hebrew, German, French or Japanese.

Finding aid available in repository and online;,folder level control.,https://assets.library.nashville.org/documents/finding-aids/Special_Collections_Division_Finding_Aid_VHP_Main_WWII.pdf.

Finding aid: Interview summaries;,item level control.,https://assets.library.nashville.org/documents/finding-aids/Special_Collections_Division_Finding_Aid_VHP_Summaries.pdf.

Finding aid: World War II index by location of service, unit, battle, or other;,https://assets.library.nashville.org/documents/finding-aids/Special_Collections_Division_Finding_Aid_VHP_WWII_Index.pdf.

Finding aid: Special interest categories;,https://assets.library.nashville.org/documents/finding-aids/Special_Collections_Division_Finding_Aid_VHP_Special_Interest.pdf.

Finding aid: Collection at a glance;,https://assets.library.nashville.org/documents/finding-aids/Special_Collections_Division_Finding_Aid_VHP_At_A_Glance.pdf.

Collected by the Nashville Room beginning January 2002.

Forms part of the Veterans History Project collection.

No further accruals are expected.