Giving away what the friends of the linebacker library love to give away more than anything else and thats some books to some lucky winners so please join us at this point in welcoming from the National Archives at wiver riverside. Randy thompson and james artoon. [applause] hi, im going to introduce myself. Randy will be giving most of the presentation. Ill be here for questions and answer. Just a little background about myself. I volunteered apt the after i got my b. A. In history from cal state San Bernardino in 2010, i began volunteering at the National Archives at riverside and then in 2012 i became a student archives technician at the National Archives at riverside and then in i got my masters degree in library and Information Science at that same time from san jose state university. And then in 2014, i moved to st. Louis and worked at the tional archives at st. Louis as a preservation technician and then in 2016 i moved back to california and then in my current role as an archives specialist. Im going to turn it over to randy here and he can give you his bio. Thank you, james. Welcome, everybody. I want to thank mr. Garza for his wonderful introduction and i also want to thank the friends to have North Hollywood library and the sherman oaks friends of library as well for inviting us to come out here. I hope you enjoyed the earlier events. James did a great job so if you saw it, let him know that you appreciate what he did. Ok . Good job, james. So for myself, i have been with the National Archives, basically this unit in Southern California since 19 5. I took a summer job as a file clerk basically just pulling the refiling materials upon customer requests. That summer job has now lasted 24 years and like i do like to tell people sometimes, im still looking far real job. I havent grown up yet but i love doing what i do, giving the presentations, providing the access of our holdings to the public so if you were able to see the presentation earlier, james covered a lot of how to find resources at the National Archives. Im going to show you actually resources you can find in my facility as well as some of these you may find similar things across the country. Some of these have been posted on facebook. Some of these records have also been used in exhibits in washington, d. C. And others are digitized in our cat dog. The thing with all of these, im not going to tell thank you whole story with all of the records im going to show you. That will make it more enticing to visit our facility and find out for yourselves. So i guess ill go ahead and begin. I think weve covered that already. Introduction to resours and my facility. James and i. Theres our email addresses. If you dont jolts those down, i do have Business Cards we can give you later and we have our tressel tell number there. Thats our main line and if you have general requests, the email address is where you can sent my questions or requests on and off, even after tonight. We do have some social media accounts. Facebook, twitter, up the ler tumbler. We make about eight most postings every month. And also find things to celebrate things each month. Womens history month, natea American History month and things like that. We really like our exposure on social media. So if youre interested in that, you can go ahead and take out your phones, give us a like or two. I can go ahead and wait. Seriously, visit and if you enjoy them, definitely give us the likes. You can make the images, that kind of thing, ok . All right, so what do we hold . We hold a lot of stuff. A lot of cool records. Cubic feet t 71,400 of material. Thats just our facility in riverside alone. The National Archives in general holds about five million cubic feet of original records historically valuable. What we maintain in riverside, theyre created by about 89 different federal agencies and courts located in Southern California, arizona, and clark county, nevada. We all know what clark county is, right . Las vegas. I see some heads nodding. What happens in vegas winds up in the National Archives so be careful, all right . [laughter] so in general, again texas records what that we hold document historic events, trends, and issues. Actions of the governments and its action with the public and documents the rights of individuals and the government. The records in our facility date from 1798 to 2003 so do we have a lot of materials that date back to the 1700s . California wasnt part of the United States until the 18 50s. What we have, its a document from an old spanish land grant that have that was given. Basically its an area of arizona today in 1789 this was granted to a family out there. This document here is stamped with kind of like a stamp tax. 179. Its written basically in oldworld spanish. I always thought i could read spanish and speak it pretty well. I took four years in high school, passed the a. P. Exams and everything. Does anybody know how to read old english . Its about the same thing trying to read old spanish. I got through part of it. My motherinlaw who came from mexico, she got through about three sentences and went i probably need some help but it is very pleasing to the eye, a beautiful document. Slows a little bit of history in the southwest United States. All right. So now that weve seen the oldest document we hold, im going to give you information on the oldest record that well create bade u. S. Government agency. Its a naturalization record dating back to 1851 created by the Los Angeles Superior Court but the bulk of our materials are really, after 1900 rung through about the 1970s or so. After the 1970s, mostly Court Records we hold but here are some of the other agencies we hold records for. The breaux bureau of Indian Affairs. Some of these agencies you may have heard of but after tonight, you cant say you havent heard of them. The bureau of land middleweight. The immigration and Naturalization Service. The National Aeronautical and space administration. The National Park service. The u. S. Army corps of engineers. They do a lot of important work. If you look around this area, any river, channel or creek that has been encased in concrete, most likely the army corps of engineers had some work to do with that. We homed the project plans for all of that stuff. A lot of their work was done after the 1938 floods. If any of you have heard of those floods that happened throughout Southern California. The u. S. Coast guard. U. S. Customs service. U. S. District courts and u. S. Forest service. I mentioned earlier we have up to 89 different federal agencies we hold records for. This is just a drop in the bucket. Those are some of the agencies that we hold the most materials for so how are they maintained . Do we just have them in boxes on the floor, thrown all over the place, cant search for them . Theyre not arranged by topic or subjects. They were not arranged by topic, subject matter, anything like that. Not like you would find in a library. For example, records related to the second world war. A lot of stuff. In, many agent signatures were involved in creating records at this time. Records relate odd to military bases. We keep the records in the original order in which he received them, that the agency created so that way we can see during their course of business, we can see what we were they were doing during the creation, is the constant use and maintenance of those records. Your topic of research may be covered by many different federal agencies and ill kind of show you guys that a little bit later. Ok, so a little more breakdown. If you attended the presentation earlier, youve heard some of this but ill go ahead and go over it again. Each federal agency will have its own number that identifies the body of records created by a certain federal agency. Each federal agency may have a handful to dozens of offices or creator. And then within each one of those creators, they may have had dozens of collections or series of records. So, for example, the immigration Naturalization Service, now called the u. S. Citizenship and immigration service. So the old i. N. S. They would have had offices at every port of entry, along the border, the coast, airports and even in places like bakersfield. All of a sudden odd, right, bakersfield . It happens. So if you think of it. That agency at a certain time couch had hundreds of offices. And all those little offices are creating records and within nose records they create different little records. For example, chinese exclusion case files or alien case files or alien registration case files so a series of records can be come prized of as little as one page or item to tens of thousands of cubic feet of material. We have some record s series that are a very small box and we have one series of Court Records treat cream did be court. He los angeles its well over 20,000 cubic feet. 20,000 cubic feet over about 100 years. A lot of material. And agencies dont also make a subjects or a topic. Second world war, first world war. They create records and files according to a scheme that works best for their business purposes. They might be alphabetical by cold or title or knew merrick by a cold old cold or numeric by a code or title. Those agencies in los angeles re indexed by parties. Sometimes researchers want to look for any sort of lawsuit that had to do with copyright. Who are the parties involved, what are the case numbers . I dont know. Lets look for the case numbers, well try to find out that stuff. File build case number. Not by type of record, not by type of lawsuit but we have pretty good indexes, things like that. We can help you find stuff pretty quickly. Back to the list, record agencies. Here are some number groups that go with nose agencies. I dont expect you to know all of this now but when you come into my facility and say i want to see everything you have in record 255. I know youve done some research and want to know about nasa. How about the breaking of the sound barrier . We have that report in our office. Pretty cool stuff and i think its also online. Looking at this. Affairs, of ainedian 75. E of our most used sets of records. Immigration and Naturalization Service is seeing a large spike in research in our office right now. Poem look the at chinas exclues of case files as well as japanese internees during world war ii. National park service. Record group 79. Youve all been to a National Park at some point in your life. We have records on the administration of those parks. U. S. Army corps of engineers, record 77 and you can see the rest of that list there. So every agency gets i want own number, special identifier so when i ask james, whats our record group 36, james . U. S. U. S. Customs. Well done, james. Use the microphone. Good job. Just wants to see if youre still wake over there. Good enough. So lonetting records by individuals. So we were going to assume that weve already done some research ahead of time and were going to show you some topics. Going to show you some original records that we digitized. Some are online, some on facebook and some have been exhibits in the National Archives in washington, d. C. Just kind of go through them, give you a little bit of the background of that record or the agency that created and it then kind of leave it up to you guys if you have more questions during the q a or again, riverside is only a couple of hours away. Come out and take a look. So when you have a confrontation with an archivist, you can do it by email, telephone or by walking right into our office. So here are some of the questions well ask you or some of the information youll need. What was the historical trend, event or issue that youre interested . . What rm the names of the individuals involved . Maybe with some personal information. If you after date of birth or proximate time of birth. Where they were living and it doesnt have to be the exact address. County is final. Los angeles county, glendale, california, anything like that is perfect. Who remember the federal agencies involved if it was more than one . And if you dont know all this stuff you may need to check some other primary and secondary sources to find some of that information above. We can also help you locate some of that. A lot of times we have people come in and say i am really looking for my great grandfather. I know he was a surveyor for the bureau of land middleweight. Off time period. We can maybe find some resources for you. Were really good at doing that. So the first topic, what do we need to know . World war ii, enemy aliens and japanese internment and some of the individuals you might be be arching these may some of the individuals youre interested in finding more about their stories. What federal agencies make involved at this point . Immigration and Naturalization Service had a pretty good presence in that. The f. B. I. Federal bureau of investigation. The war relocation authority. The u. S. District courts and the Selective Service system really among other agencies. So as i mentioned earlier, that your topic of research might cover the records of many federal agencies and thats what were here to help you determine which records you actually need. So the information, the what you need to know for mr. Nikata. He lived in ouma, arizona, in 1944. Born april 27, 1926 in san diego, california. And the record that we found him in, and this was actually on exhibits in the washington, d. C. National archives five years ago. It was an exhibit showing signatures of individuals. This record is from record group 147. Records of the Selective Service system and this document is a statement of United States citizen of japanese ancestry. So what these are is basically a questionnaire to find out information about an individual. Theyre going to ask, of course, what your name is, your date of birth, your present address, the last two addresses in which you were living. This gentleman was living in ouma, arizona in 1944. He gives some information about where he was living prior to that. Selannea beach, california. Vista, california. Other personal information. Gender, height, weight. Marital status. You go further down, some of the stuff, they want to know parents names so if youre a family historianian and you dont know a lot about some of your ancestors, would this be a good resource to put together for some information . And then asking about relatives living through the United States you may have at that time. So lets listing two individuals, a brother and a sister and saying theyre both in poston, arizona. Knowing these records, poston, arizona, was one of the camps in arizona. At that time. And a little bit further, education information. We find out where in gentleman went to Elementary School and a high school. Sometimes we dont know that by their an zestors but if you can get a record like there, kind of cool to find out where they went to school and then they sk for references about asking your character, things like that. Wont list all the names of the people here or their occupations but you can see what kind of information you can get on the questionnaire and finally we sign it so we think that is completed, right . Ok. So as it turns out, questions 28 and 2 on this questionnaire didnt have enough room for him to put all of his thoughts down. Basically this individual said he would be more than willing to serve in the u. S. Army to help the u. S. Win the war. He wants to get his family out of the camps in poston, arizona. States hes a loyal citizen of the United States. He is not being permitted Civil Liberties right now. He doesnt like that, he wants that to change, stating that a true democratic form of government wouldnt do that to his people and later on he states also that he is willing to serve his country. He may not want to bear arms but hes willing to do anything in the defense plant industry or any other capacity to help win the war. So Selective Service system, you would think this would be more like an f. B. I. Report on or an immigration and naturalization record but this is something the selective as much as system had as they were asking people about going into the draft. So moving on to the next individual. He lived in santa maria at the time, 1945. He was born in 1887 in japan. And the record that we have is an enemy alien case file on him. Its actually quite a thick file created by the records of the immigration and nationalization as much as. Ill slow awe few of the examples that you would find in general in these records. Report of an alien enemy. Basic information again about yourself, personal information, ext of kin, whos your spouse. Dates about when an henled. This gentleman was apprehended on december 8, 1941. He was given to the it. N. S. In los angeles. You look further down you can kind of see a stamp on there. It shows the date that this is being adjudicated or at least reviewed. December 7, 1945. That entire process of file has been going on about four years. He gives more information. How did he arrive in the country, when did he arrive. What was the name of the ship, the name of the shipping line. What country hes a citizen of. Where in japan he was born and so on, asking have you been to the u. S. Before . He said yes, 1913 and 1914. They ask other questions like why were you here and that kind of thing. And then sometimes you will get a fingerprint card with some photographs and those records. And this one is pretty common with all those records. And just to point out, these enemy alien case files also included individuals from other countries with which we were at war with at the time. Its not just individual