Recording of Christian Zanési's Arkheion, les voix de Pierre Schaeffer. The composer has these remarks on the creation of this piece: In 1996, on the initiative of the Experimental Music Group of Bourges (GMEB), around a hundred composers paid tribute to Pierre Schaeffer. It was on this occasion that I composed a short, outdated waltz, the theme of which is childhood (it is said of Pierre Schaeffer that, when he was a few years old, he would have written a 'treatise on the hoop'). Later, I continued: the railway, the sound object, the single man, relativity in all things to evoke this multiple man who played with all registers and all voices. So many faces which, superimposed, draw a single form. As for Arkheion, the words of Stockhausen (1995) I composed this work from archives (from the Greek, arkheion). Karlheinz Stockhausen was a kind of distant and inaccessible angel, the ideal situation. I had only used one spoken document then. For Pierre Schaeffer, who is closer to me (I took his classes at the conservatory and produced several radio programs with him) I took, here and there, fragments discovered at random in the considerable mass of archives concerning him. With …

Recording of Ipke Starke's Die Unsichtbare front. The composer notes the following: The spatial installation of this work was designed and realized for the highest space in the building of the Technical Collections of the city of Dresden. This place just below the dome of the tower with its exceptional view of the city and the nearby radio tower is part of the work. The composition itself consists of 16 minutes of music on magnetic tape, constantly looped, spatialized and broadcast through the 7 loudspeakers configured in the space. The piece is based on modulations of extremely high frequencies, up to the limits of the audible, whose dynamic degree barely reaches the threshold of perception. What is significant vis-à-vis the content of the play is their interruption by documentary material: news in different languages, interviews, recordings of demonstrations, reports and documents from the archives, and synthetically generated or processed sounds of associative character. This confrontation of situational elements with documentary elements generates contradictory tensions in space. The architectural form of this one is also substantial: first of all, the space is presented in a neutral way, not done on purpose for pleasure. The exposed location of the dome provides openness, …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Robert Donihi. Donihi was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He graduated from high school in 1934. During the Depression, he worked low wage jobs and lost his leg in an automobile accident while hitchhiking to Florida. His experiences influenced him to attend law school. He passed the Bar in 1941 and went to work in Tennessee. He was exempt from the draft, but was motivated to learn to fly under the Civil Air Patrol. He joined the Coast Guard Reserve during World War II and became a Seaman First Class, ferrying submarine chasers down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico for shakedown cruises. After the war, he met Tom Clark, President Truman’s Attorney General (and later Associate Supreme Court Justice). Clark offered Donihi a job in Tokyo and introduced him to Joseph B. Keenan, who had worked in President Roosevelt’s White House. Keenan was setting up an organization named Project K, which operated out of the Justice Department. Its purpose was to prosecute Emperor Hirohito and other suspected Japanese war criminals. In Tokyo he lived with Keenan and 15 other lawyers and judges. He attended several meetings …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Arthur Owen. Owen enlisted in the Marine Corps in May 1941. After boot camp in San Diego, he was assigned to the Marine Detachment at San Clemente Island, California. After he was there for a year, they transferred him to Camp Elliott in San Diego where he became part of the 2nd Marine Division. In Oct 1942, they sailed for New Zealand and additional training. They made several practice landings and then invaded Tarawa on November 20, 1943. Owen was a corporal in what was called Shore Party Command Group - Headquarters, 2nd Battalion, 18th Marines. The job of this Group was to establish dumps on the beaches and unload the ships. Owen states that he was probably one of the few that made the landing in Tarawa twice and never did get ashore, because he spent 13 days on the pier. At the end of this time, they went aboard the President Monroe and sailed to Hawaii. Upon arriving in Hilo, they set up a camp on the volcano which was at the Parker Ranch in Kamuela (Camp Tarawa) and at an old Japanese POW camp. While …

Lecture given Tuesday, June 18, 1996 at Abilene Christian University

Lecture given Tuesday, June 18, 1996 at Abilene Christian University

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Glen McDole. McDole was born in Orleans, Nebraska 6 February 1921 and after graduating from high school, enlisted in the Marine Corps in the fall of 1940. Following basic training, he went to Cavite Navy Yard where he performed security guard duties as a member of the 1st Separate Marine Battalion. The battalion was moved to Corregidor Island after the Japanese began attacking the Philippines. There, he was in close contact with General MacArthur. He witnessed MacArthur’s evacuation with General Wainwright assuming command. McDole describes his close proximity to Wainwright and the eventual surrender of Corregidor. He describes his ordeal as a prisoner of war over the next few years, including building a large, concrete Japanese runway in the village of Puerto Princesa on the Philippine island of Palawan. During this time he endured an emergency appendectomy with no anesthesia and no infection-fighting drugs. He also describes the events of 14 December 1944 when the Japanese killed 139 of the 150 remaining prisoners on Palawan, by burning many of them alive. He managed to escape and find refuge among friendly villagers, and eventually was evacuated from the Philippines …