USS Silversides Museum

According to the Oral History Association:

“Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events. Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies.”

Oral histories play a large role in our mission to preserve military history. By engaging with individuals who lived through significant events in our history, we are able to gain a clearer understanding of their actions, their motivations and their guiding principles.

We seek out oral histories from our veteran and active military communities, and through our partnership with Grand Valley State University, we send many of the oral histories we produce to the Library of Congress. We also include these audio recordings in our exhibits, and we publish them on our YouTube channel for researchers, family members and the general public to digest.

Listen to our collection of oral histories below

Oral Histories coming soon. Contact us for more information.

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