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- Description:
- Dr. William Derman, Michigan State University Professor of Anthropology, talks about his career-long effort to combine intellectual engagement with political activism and social change. Derman is interviewed by Dr. David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center and Peter Limb, MSU Libraries Area Studies Librarian. Derman recalls his time at the University of Michigan, joining Students for a Democratic Society, teaching African American students in Detroit, his anti-war efforts, and his work as an anti-Apartheid activist. He also talks about his work in South Africa with land use planning, water rights, and education and later shifting his focus to Zimbabwe to assist development and resettlement projects. Derman questions the ability of younger faculty and students to be engaged both as academics and citizens. He sees a low level of activism in the current faculty and student body and is not sure how the community will respond to current and future challenges. Part of the African Studies Interview Series sponsored by the MSU Libraries and the African Studies Center.
- Date Issued:
- 2005-12-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Viola Baas talks about her experiences as a teacher at U.S. military bases in Japan during the Korean War. Baas explains why she applied to teach overseas, traveling to Seattle for a harsh orientation and training, and being sent to the island of Hokkaido in the north of Japan as U.S. occupation forces were leaving and base schools were closing. Baas describes touring Japan, her living situation, her fellow teachers, and her many assignments and says that she was reassigned to teach in Germany in June of 1956. Bass also discusses the differences between schools in Japan and Germany and describes the culture shock she felt when she finally returned to the U.S.. Baas is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-07-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Eileen Lay talks about her service as a teacher in occupied Japan from 1950 to 1953. Lay describes traveling to Japan and conducting shipboard sing-a-longs with U.S. troops bound for the Korean War. She also talks about her daily life in Japan, surviving a typhoon, the classes she taught, her friendships with Japanese citizens and U.S. soldiers, judging Japanese students in English speaking contests, and traveling with the Cormorant fisherman who used the birds to catch fish. Lay is recorded at a regular meeting of the Women's Overseas Service League Lansing, MI Unit. Introduction is by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-19T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Jessie Melis talks about her service as a teacher in occupied Germany from August 1950 to July 1953. She recalls the devastation in German cities, socializing with German citizens, German customs, her living quarters in Munich, taking meals in the officer's mess, her experiences with the black market and the depressed German economy. Melis also talks about meeting former Nazis, the differences between teaching in Germany and the U.S., the differences between American and German students and traveling to Berlin through the Russian Zone. Melis says that she traveled to Palestine and Jerusalem before finally returning to the U.S. to help her family and re-establish her career in East Lansing, MI. Melis is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Grace Van Wert talks about her service as a school teacher in post-war Germany from September 1946 to August 1947. Van Wert says that she decided to take a leave absence from her teaching job in the Lansing, MI school district, was assigned to a one room school in the resort town of Bad Wildungen in Germany. Van Wert talks about the town, the post-war devastation, the children of U.S. dependents who were her students, the limited food supplies, and the poverty and destitution which the German people were experiencing. Van Wert says that she gave away soap to German civilians, exchanged coffee for original artwork, paid the man teaching her children German in cigarettes and that she could smell decaying corpses even a year after the war had ended. Van Wert is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-08-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Hazel Christenson recalls her childhood and youth in Minnesota, becoming a teacher in 1929, and coming to Lansing, MI in 1945 to teach in the Lansing school district. Christenson explains why she later accepted an overseas teaching position in Germany, saying that she wanted to see the places she had read about all of her life and her family's native Sweden. She describes her teaching duties at the U.S. Army base in Bremerhaven, her quarters, sanitary conditions, her pay, opportunities to socialize with U.S. Army officers and the devastation of post-war Germany. She also talks about coming back to the U.S. in 1952, the rough passage, and returning to her teaching position in Lansing. Christenson is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher who shares some of her memories as she talks with Christenson.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-07-24T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Edna Miller talks about her work as a teacher in the city of Baguio, Philippines beginning in August 1941 and being interned as a prisoner of war in a camp in the mountains outside of Manila after the Japanese invasion. Miller discusses the conditions in the camp, the prisoner's diet, holding makeshift church services, the behavior of the Japanese guards and her fellow prisoners. After the camp was liberated in 1944, Miller says that she decided to stay in the Philippines and joined the American Red Cross and then after the war ended, took a job with the U.S. Army teaching soldiers until 1947 when she left Manila for the states. Miller, who later taught in Army schools in occupied Japan, says that she has no regrets about her overseas experiences, despite the hardships and that her greatest thrill was meeting General Douglas MacArthur when her POW camp was liberated. Miller is interviewed by Evelyn McHiggins.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-06-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Etta Goff discusses her time as a teacher in Germany following World War Two. Goff talks about her inability to serve earlier because of her mother's illness and her concern that she was too old to teach overseas. Goff says however, that she passed her physical with flying colors and was off to Heidelberg, Germany at the age of 52. Goff speaks fondly of the German people, especially a man who was a POW in the United States during the war. She also describes the school house she taught in and the curriculum she developed. Goff is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-03-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Dr. William Derman, Michigan State University Professor of Anthropology, talks about his career-long effort to combine intellectual engagement with political activism and social change. Derman is interviewed by Dr. David Wiley, Director of the MSU African Studies Center and Peter Limb, MSU Libraries Area Studies Librarian. Derman recalls his time at the University of Michigan, joining Students for a Democratic Society, teaching African American students in Detroit, his anti-war efforts, and his work as an anti-Apartheid activist. He also talks about his work in South Africa with land use planning, water rights, and education and later shifting his focus to Zimbabwe to assist development and resettlement projects. Derman questions the ability of younger faculty and students to be engaged both as academics and citizens. He sees a low level of activism in the current faculty and student body and is not sure how the community will respond to current and future challenges. Part of the African Studies Interview Series sponsored by the MSU Libraries and the African Studies Center.
- Date Issued:
- 2005-12-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection