The labor-related oral history that I read for the first Oral History Exercise came from the Rosie the Riveter/World War II American Home Front project of the Oral History Center of UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Li
brary. This project was designed to, according to the project website, explore “why people from different backgrounds came to the Bay Area, what they did when they arrived, and what they learned from the fluidity and flux of wartime life that affected decisions they made after the war ended.” Other topics such as education, women’s rights, sexuality, race relations, family life, and community history were also discussed via the Rosie the Riveter Project. My specific oral history of choice was conducted by Robin Li with Mora Mae Gilley in 2011, and was available from the UC Berkeley Library Digital Collections in transcript form only (a small, fifteen-second blurb of the oral history is available from a video excerpt of the entire project).
Altogether, I found the oral history to be a wonderful read as is, and an insightful example of doing oral history in a university project funded in part by the National Park Service. The interview was conducted in two separate sessions on the same day, represented by “Audiofile 1” and “Audiofile 2”, and was made publicly available (as mentioned prior) in transcript form only. Perhaps most important about reading and then analyzing this oral history was the fact that I could only read it. Reminiscent of Alessandro Portelli’s “What Makes Oral History Different” chapter and Louis Starr’s “Oral History” chapter from the prior week, the Mora Gilley oral history demonstrates the full transcript versus tape debate in practice. The transcript of such is digitally available and does not seem to be heavily edited—UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center states in an insert page before the transcript that all tape recordings are “lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee”—but is very obviously lacking Portelli’s insistence on the orality of oral sources. But, as Starr mentioned in his chapter, the transcript format has a much greater degree of accessibility and ease of use. I would have loved to have the original tape recording available for comparison, not only in terms of format but also in terms of how my interpretation and “reading” of the interview ended up. Alas, only the transcript was available.
In terms of the ethical approach, I found no glaring issues or problems with the manner in which Robin Li conducted the interview. While intimate questions were asked that likely elicited emotional responses, I never found there to be any reticence or hostility from Ms. Gilley in response. Topics such as family illnesses and death were brought up naturally, usually from Ms. Gilley’s own volition, and were not pushed to any uncomfortable limit.
In terms of the questions asked in the interview, they ranged from thoughtfully insightful to noticeably leading. Several questions were asked that, although well within the topical focus of the overall Rosie the Riveter project, did not fit within the flow of the interview. Questions about Japanese internment (p. 09), Victory Gardens (p. 13), the patriotic aspects of being a Rosie (pp. 13–4), segregated work (p. 21), and the dropping of the atomic bomb (p. 22) come off as markedly abrupt, awkward, and out of place. Several of the project’s overarching themes were shoehorned into the interview via leading questions. However, questions relating to wartime child care (pp. 16–7), workplace sexism (p. 21), and ethnic and race relations (p. 20), although discussing potentially uncomfortable topics, were asked appropriately and respectfully and elicited solid responses. It is clear that this interview was conducted with specific research questions in mind, but it was able to balance these out with more thoughtful and natural questions.
In terms of overall style, this oral history was conducted with a very hands-off philosophy, both when interviewing and after the fact with the transcript. While it is impossible to know how much was truly edited and revised without access to the original tape, there are very few instances of narrator or interviewer commentary inserted into the transcript. The interviewer typically only asked one or two sentence questions, and let Ms. Gilley answer as completely as she wished. Only once did the interviewer interrupt Ms. Gilley to ask for further explanation regarding segregated work (p. 21). This oral history was generally conducted via a “less is more” style from the interviewer, and I believe it was successful and appropriate.
While the transcript was an engaging read, I feel as though it was lacking without an accompanying tape recording. The transcript most certainly would be more convenient for a researcher simply looking for documentary evidence, and I don’t see any reason why this one wouldn’t suffice. However, it is difficult to truly analyze oral history without the orality. Interruptions were marked by em dashes in the transcript, but there’s no way to know how emotive these were or in what context they occurred; punctuation marks give no insight into tone or other aural cues of significance/disinterest; altogether, the transcript reads as almost any other historical document does: informative, but dry. This ultimately reduces the unique perspective and singularity of the oral history conducted, reducing it to yet another textual contribution to the historical narrative. Hearing the tape recording would make this oral history much more involved, both from the scholar’s and the narrator’s position.
Oral History Citation:
Mora Gilley, “Rosie the Riveter, World War II Home Front Oral History Project” conducted by Robin Li in 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2012, https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/218663?ln=en&v=pdf.
