“We hung around the radio with great interest”: Accessing childhood recollections of world war II through interdisciplinarity

Abstract

In this article, we – an historian and a cognitive psychologist – address the interdisciplinary approach undergirding the oral history project Childhood Narratives of World War II on the Home Front. This project collects and analyzes the narratives of those who were between the ages of 5 and 18 during World War II through the lens of oral history and cognitive processing methodologies. We aim to collect roughly 200 oral histories, digitally archive the audios and transcriptions, and use them to access childhood realities of the home front across nationalities, cultures, and languages. This project is predicated on the idea that children were key actors in the creation of home front cultures across national borders, and that the integration of cognitive science into the practice of oral history gives interviewers access to rich, deeply nuanced narratives of a significant, but often overlooked, population. We argue that this approach, when executed systematically and thoughtfully, allows interviewers and narrators to break through decades-old metanarratives to understand the quotidian and widely varied realities of children on the home front. We call on oral historians of all stripes to reach out to colleagues who might approach interviewing from different angles. In so doing, we create greater opportunities to complicate our understanding of the past.