The Library of Congress presents this seasonal collection of field recordings of over 200 ordinary Americans' reactions to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Made between December 8, 1941, and February 1942, the original recordings used a technology called direct-to-disk, which created fragile, lacquer-coated, aluminum disks that could be played at 33 1/3 or 78 RPMs. The...

As the series producer, Laurence Rees, mentions in the introduction to this engaging online presentation, "Auschwitz is unique. It has a physical beginning in May 1940 and physical ending in January 1945, and is the site of the single largest mass murder in the history of humanity." The overall focus of this website is to offer an informed and nuanced attempt to understand the extermination...

The online presence of the Australian War Memorial, located in Canberra, Australia, this site contains dozens of valuable resources for those with a penchant either for Australian military history or merely for finding the military unit in which a relative may have served during the past 100 years. With numerous sectional headings, the Web site has an effective long-form essay that serves as a...

With the wealth of allusions to Pearl Harbor in the news this week, this miniseries from HBO focused on World War II is well-timed. Parts one and two of the ten-part Band of Brothers premiered this week, and viewers will find supplemental material here including veterans' stories, a timeline of events related to the war, details on drop zones and paratroopers' uniforms, explanations of the...

The late Winston Spencer Churchill was many things, including a fine diplomat, an excellent statesmen, and quite a prodigious author. Of course, he was also a good friend to the United States, and this online exhibit from the Library of Congress explores Churchill's long relationship with the U.S., which he referred to as "the great Republic". With generous funding from John W. Kluge (and the...

Until quite recently, many organizations (such as libraries and newspapers) kept extensive clipping files, thematically organized, and ready at a minute's notice for use by a columnist, researcher, or those who were just plain curious. One such organization was the Hamilton Spectator, a Canadian newspaper which kept a collection of 144,000 newspaper articles (culled from various Canadian...

Developed by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, this site offers visual and written testimony about the experiences of United States veterans ranging from those who served in World War I, to those who served in the first Gulf War. The documents are organized into three main topical areas, including courage, patriotism, and community. The community section features...

Throughout World War I and World War II, American Indians were asked to join the United States armed forces. They served in many different campaigns, and in many different capacities, but perhaps one of the best known groups of American Indians were the "Code Talkers". The "Code Talkers" were asked to develop a way of transmitting secret messages using their own native languages, and they were...

The 140-million dollar summer blockbuster Pearl Harbor opened this Memorial Day weekend eliciting tears from teenaged girls, mixed reactions from veterans, and measured optimism from the Disney executives who financed the three-hour epic. As everyone surely knows by now, the movie tells the story of the bombing of Pearl Harbor through the vehicle of a love story. The producers, Jerry Bruckheimer...

Earlier this week, researchers from the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii Underwater Research Lab located the remains of a Japanese midget submarine. Found in 1200 feet of water, the submarine was sunk by the USS Ward just an hour before the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Most important, the discovery of the midget submarine offers concrete physical evidence that the United...