>>haga
clic para leer en español
October 18, 2010
In September, the Hoover
Institution Library and Archives received a large donation
of World War II–era research materials from Roger Mansell,
a retired businessman from Palo Alto, California, who has spent
the past twenty-one years researching the fates of Allied prisoners
of war from the Pacific theater of that war. Consisting of more
than fifteen linear feet of documents, some fifteen hours of
video recordings, and approximately four hundred published titles,
the Roger Mansell Collection will be a valuable resource for
those interested in studying the roles of prisoners of war during
that conflict.
Since the beginning of Mansell’s
project, his chief goal has been to compile a database of more
than 100,000 records to document what happened to every Allied
soldier who was captured by Japanese forces during the war. The
database thus contains information on when soldiers were captured,
where they were interned, and whether they died or were repatriated
at the end of the war.
As one result of his research, Mansell
has helped several families locate the remains of soldiers who
were missing in action during the war; he has also frequently
been consulted by researchers around the world seeking information
about individual soldiers or the camps in which they were interned.
He estimates that his project is approximately 90 percent complete,
and, although he has retired from the actively compiling the
database, the project is being continued by his colleagues, who
can be contacted via the reference department of the Hoover Institution
Archives.
Among the materials that Mansell
has donated to Hoover are dozens of firsthand interviews conducted
by Mansell with former prisoners of war or their families; more
than twelve boxes of material about various prison camps throughout
East and Southeast Asia; and countless files on individual prisoners,
including diaries, photographs, maps of prison camps, correspondence,
and other materials that former prisoners shared with Mansell
over the years. Other research materials collected by Mansell
include copies of archival documents from repositories in the
United States, Great Britain, and Australia, as well as original
materials produced or published by the prisoners themselves.
In addition, many of the donated books include hard-to-find titles,
such as self-published memoirs by former prisoners of war and
other materials produced for limited circulation.
Throughout his project, Mansell
repeatedly stressed that he wished the information he collected
to be shared as freely and widely as possible. With the donation
of his research materials to the Hoover Institution, he has ensured
that his collection will reach a wide audience indeed.
>>For information about how to consult
this collection, click
here.
>> Online archive of California
lists the inventory.
