{"id":3914,"date":"2009-11-09T05:22:31","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T10:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/utnews.utoledo.edu\/?p=3914"},"modified":"2009-11-06T13:56:55","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T18:56:55","slug":"band-of-brothers-and-sisters-share-wwii-experiences-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/11_09_2009\/band-of-brothers-and-sisters-share-wwii-experiences-in-new-book","title":{"rendered":"Band of brothers and sisters share WWII experiences in new book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russell Frautschi, a radio operator and gunner on a B-17 shot down over Germany, lived for 10 days in a bare six-by-eight interrogation center room where, as he said, \u201cAll I would give them was my name, rank and serial number. I don\u2019t know why they kept questioning me. They knew everything about me, even knew my mother\u2019s maiden name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"webwwii-book-cover-4c1-10-5-copy\"<\/a>Harvey Canard, who spent five weeks on the ash-covered Pacific island of Iwo Jima, recalled the peculiarly personal turn combat could take: \u201cIf someone creeps up on you at night, you can\u2019t fire your rifle because the flash can be seen for miles and the next thing you know, shells would come raining in on you … next you throw a hand grenade at him. The downside to that is he can pick it up and throw it back at you. The next option is to take him hand-to-hand. The choices are bad, bad and bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marguerite Terrill, a real-life Rosie the Riveter who worked on B-24s at Michigan\u2019s Willow Run plant, remembered the day a flight engineer helped her sneak onto a bomber test flight: \u201cThe crew was in on it, so I told them I was there and they gave me a parachute to wear. The crew had to work out a lot of bugs while in the air, so I didn\u2019t get back until an hour after shift change. I missed my ride home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are just snippets of three of the 80 interviews with members of the \u201cGreatest Generation\u201d that appear in What a Time It Was: Interviews With Northwest Ohio Veterans of World War II,<\/em> a book published today by The University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center Press. The book was compiled and edited by U.S. Army veteran and UT alumnus Andrew \u201cBud\u201d Fisher, a volunteer for the local Veterans History Project that\u2019s archived in the Ward M. Canaday Center of Special Collections in Carlson Library.<\/p>\n

Fisher interviewed some 500 area WWII veterans, a feat honored by the Library of Congress. He spoke with men and women from all service branches and both the European and Pacific theaters of operation, in addition to the home front. The book\u2019s appendix lists all the interviewees, whose recordings are housed in the Canaday Center.<\/p>\n

Fisher, who located the book\u2019s subjects though veterans\u2019 organizations, said of the experience, \u201cIt was a privilege to talk with all these people who answered the call to duty. There was a thread that ran through all [the stories]: patriotism and modesty. No matter how many medals some of them won, they would downplay it; sometimes I\u2019d have to drag it out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many cases, veterans who\u2019d never shared their wartime experiences with their families would open up for Fisher. \u201cAfterwards, receiving a copy of the audiotape for the family was important to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tom Barden, professor of English and director of the UT Honors Program, who helped edit the book, noted the confluence of its publication and the Nov. 11 dedication of the Veterans\u2019 Plaza on Main Campus. \u201cIt\u2019s an ideal match,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pointing to the success of the National Public Radio’s \u201cStoryCorps\u201d project, Barden added, \u201cA lot of what\u2018s circulating out there points to the importance of oral histories like these.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[The veterans] took me all over the world, to places I never heard of,\u201d Fisher said of the interviews. \u201cIt was a history lesson, a geography lesson, a lesson about Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a Time It Was<\/em> will be available for purchase for $25 following the 11 a.m. Veterans\u2019 Plaza dedication at a table inside the Memorial Field House. It also can be ordered online from the Urban Affairs Center at http:\/\/uac.utoledo.edu\/Publications\/uac-press\/WhatATimeItWas.htm<\/a>. Shipping and handling is $1.35. An option for credit cards will be available soon, as will copies at the UT Bookstore and UT Medical Center gift shop, and at Borders Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eighty men and women shared their stories for a new book, “What a Time It Was: Interviews With Northwest Ohio Veterans of World War II,” published by the UT Urban Affairs Center Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}