Search Constraints
Search Results
- Description:
- Robert D. Vassen, retired Associate Director of the English Language Center at Michigan State University is interviewed by John Metzler, African Studies Center Outreach Coordinator and Peter Limb, Michigan State University Librarian and Africana Bibliographer. Vassen discusses growing up in South Africa during the late 1940's and 1950's as an Indian and living in the Indian community of Fordsburg, near Johannesburg. Vassen says he was active in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and in 1962, joined the illegal military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Forced into exile in London in 1964, Vassen says he continued to be an active member of the ANC and edited "Letters From Robben Island: a selection of Ahmed Kathrada's prison correspondence, 1964-1989."
- Date Issued:
- 2005-01-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Lillian Kivela talks about her service in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War Two including, why she enlisted in June 1943, nurse's training, basic Army training, housing, uniforms, and her duties at the Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa. She says that she was sent to New Jersey in preparation for being shipped to Europe and describes shipboard conditions and being seasick throughout the entire ten-day voyage. She talks about being housed in an unheated Welsh resort hotel, marching, walking a mile to the mess hall for meals, serving in the orthopedic ward at a hospital in Headington, a suburd of Oxford and experiencing an influx of patients following D-Day and the subsequent fighting, and the early use of penicillin to control infection. In her off-time, Kivela says that she often visited London for the theater, rode her bicycle around Oxford, became acquainted with British families and even met the Queen Mother and boxer Joe Louis when they visited the hospital. Back in the States, after the war, she says that she had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life and finally came to Michigan State College to finish her degree in microbiology. Kivela is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Robert D. Vassen, retired Associate Director of the English Language Center at Michigan State University is interviewed by John Metzler, African Studies Center Outreach Coordinator and Peter Limb, Michigan State University Librarian and Africana Bibliographer. Vassen discusses growing up in South Africa during the late 1940's and 1950's as an Indian and living in the Indian community of Fordsburg, near Johannesburg. Vassen says he was active in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and in 1962, joined the illegal military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Forced into exile in London in 1964, Vassen says he continued to be an active member of the ANC and edited "Letters From Robben Island: a selection of Ahmed Kathrada's prison correspondence, 1964-1989."
- Date Issued:
- 2005-01-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection