captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 can united states built and operated ten internment camps after the bombing of pearl harbor. the eastern most were located in arkansas towns of jerome an butler. there's a collection of crafts and artworks created by internees at the rower camp. >> the arts and crafts were sort of how they kept their sanity it gave them something to do. depression was so bad in a lot of the camps in that people --

there was a high incidence of suicide. so people would make these things of beauty to give to each other just as a way to supp we support you and we care about you and here is a little something to cheer you up. i think that they really used the art as a way of expressing hope in a time that sort of seemed hopeless. the camp opened in 1942 in september. the first people arrived then and then over the next several months the bulk of them came. they filled their time working within the camps. but then they also had a good bit of free time, too, that they had to fill. and so a lot of the things that are in the collection that we received are pieces of art that people in the camp did. some of it was done by students as class assignments in school. but a lot is 3d art and found object art that was from people trying to do what they could to

decorate their barracks or to entertain their children. again, when they moved, they weren't able to bring a lot of toys. they had to make toys for their children. they definitely weren't able to bring decorative things with them. they tried to make the barracks as home-like as possible and have some sense of normalcy for their children and families. >> jamie vogel was an art teacher at the rower camp. after the camps closed, she maintained this huge collection. she willed this collection to rosalie san teen gould who lived in mcgee. she wanted a place where it could be more publicly accessible. she contacted us at the butler center for arkansas studys. she wanted to find a place where not only the documents could be maintained but the artwork could be main and the. because we had both a research

room and art gallery, she knew this would be a place where everything could stay together and it would remain as the collection. >> the collection is kept in our research room closed stacks which is through this door. rosalie gave us a couple hundred pieces of art and about 20 boxes of documents. this is one of my favorite piece that is wasn't part of the original collection that rosalie gave us. one of rosalie's caveats forgiving us this art ap documents, we make this publicly available to anyone wanting to see it. she was very specific that anyone who came from the camps or their descendants that wanted to see the art, that they should be able to see it. they should be able to touch it. they should be able to look at it because it was so much of their heritage. after we received the collection through all the publicity we

got, we started being contacted by other people who had little pieces of memorabilia or things from the camps or things related to the camps that they wanted to add to the collection. so we've sort of continued rosalie's tradition of receiving things from people so that this part of history can be preserved. now, this piece was given to us by a pair of twins whose family was at the camp at rower. they told the story that a man who lived in the same block that they did had carved this for their mother. and so this was in their barack the whole time that they were growing up. then when they moved away they took it with them and it had stayed in their mother's house the whole time. they were just so happy that it was going to be reunited with other art from the collection and it would become part of the rower story here in arkansas. because it was such a swampy area, it was filled with cypress trees. so they had these cypress roots.

and the people in the camp would go out and collect these cypress roots because they wanted to make kobu which is this. >> what is kobu? >> kobu is the heart of a tree root and what they would do is gather these and then boil them and peel away all of the outer bark and it would leave these wonderful little bumpy art forms. kobu actually means bump. you would have these little art forms and they would polish them and use them just for decorative pieces. and then this is an example of a vase that was made out of the cypress tree stump. so they would use that as a flower vase. this folder has an interesting it item. it came from the department of

justice and it's conduct be observed by alien enemies. keeping in mind the vast majority of the people who were here were american citizens at the time they were taken away to the camps. and these regulations have things like no alien enemy shall be affiliated with any organization designated by the attorney general as opposed to the public interest of the united states nor shall any alien enemy attend any meeting or possess or distribute any literature of such an organization. the other thing in this folder are little coupon books from the camp canteen. most of the people who were in camp worked in some capacity. some worked in the kitchens. a lot of them worked outside the camp helping clear land. they were paid a very small wage for doing that. they could use these coupon

books at the canteen to purchase supplies. when they first got there, they had very few things to choose from. but over time they were able to purchase art supplies and they even ordered things out of catalogs. at the point that the people knew they were going to be sent to the camps, they had to disperse themselves of all of their business things, their farms, their houses, their vehicles. anything that they couldn't take to camp. some of them tried storing some of their possessions. a lot of them just sold things off. they sold it off sort of at fire sale prices. they didn't get hardly anything of what their possessions were worth. so they didn't really come to the camp wealthy people. the people in the camps found wonderfully creative ways to deal with the shortages of materials and personal items.

for example, they were able to make zori shoes out of skrapt material and just braided canvas to give them tread. >> how did they know how to do this? >> necessity. necessity became the mother of invention for them. i'm sure some of the people who were there already had skills neighbors and friends. but they used whatever was available. this one the made out of dried grass that they made from the surrounding area. this would be like a shower shoe. they made a lot of their own tools. they would take dinner knives and things and sharpen them to use as carving tools. and then as time went on, again, they were able to order things from catalogs or get supplies. also a lot of community groups would send things in to the

camps because there was a lot of sympathy for the people who had to move in there. so the good hearted people would put together care packages and send in these three pieces are bird pins that were from scrap wood. these were phenomenon all over the camps. they didn't take a lot of materials to do. it became a real skill for people to make these little birds. they would use things like ought bon prints as their models. if you look at bird pins from the different camps, you'll see the same model bird from a lot of different locations. but there's some really wonderful things about these pieces. obviously they're beautifully carved and the painting on them is just highly detailed. but you can see things like, on the back they used little safety pins for clasps.

and because bird legs are so small, they couldn't really carve them well. so they would use tiny pieces of wire to make the legs. and i heard stories about how they would take little pieces off the salvage edge of the window screens for the wires and twist them together to make these little bird legs. >> what does this work tell you about the type of people who are at this camp? >> i think the fact that they took so much pride in the things they were making and they worked so hard to create these little things of beauty, tells you a lot about the spirit of the people who were in the camps. i think the important thing to take away from this story is not to panic. a lot of people have talked about the similarities between the attack on pearl harbor and 9/11 because that's another

instance when something terrible happened and there was a lot of confusion and the automatic response was, well, let's round up all of these people and protect ourselves from them. it was very interesting to hear people from the japanese american community talk about their reactions during 9/11 and after 9/11 when there was a lot of talk about condemning an entire people because of the acts of a handful of people and how they just wanted people to remember what had happened in this case so that they didn't make the same mistake again. all weekend long "american history tv" is featuring little rock, arkansas. learn more about little rock and find out where c-span's local content vehicles are going next online at c-span.org/localcontent. you're watching "american history tv" all weekend every

week end on c-span3. follow c-span's local content vehicles throughout the weekend as book tv and "american history tv" explore the history and literary culture of little rock, arkansas. today starting at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. author griff stockily on the african-american and killing share croppers. >> you had calls going all up and down the mississippi delta saying that blacks were now in revolt. and the next morning between 600 and 1,000 men, white men pour into phillips county to begin shooting down blacks. >> on "american history tv" on c-span3, sunday at 5:00 p.m., former student on into dent.

>> what's going to happen when you get to those steps. they seem to. the crowd is with us now. the momentum is with us and they're pushing us up the steps. >> these stories and others from c-span's local content vehicles. this weekend on c-span2 and 3. ronald reagan was leaving this hotel after delivering a speech to the afl cio. hinckley can't believe he's this close. 15 feet from the president. he shoots six shots. the first one hits jim brady, the press secretary in thed. the second one hits tom dell hand tea, a d.c. police officer who turned around to check on the president's progress. now the path to the president is clear. it's wide open. hinckley has an effective range of 20 to 30 feet. he's done target practice, can hit stationary targets 20 to 30 feet.

>> march 30th, 1981, would be assassin john hinckley fires six shots. this w eekend wilbur on the race to save a president. sunday at 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern on "american history tv" this weekend on c-span3. in march of 1979 c-span began televising the u.s. house of representatives to households nationwide. today our content of politics and public affairs, nonfiction books and american history is available on tv, radio and online. >> i actually was staying in the lincoln bedroom last night. i couldn't resist getting on the phone and i called up the secret service as the president, "feel like going jogging tonight, in the nude." my wife and i were looking at the lawn around midnight, and these guys were like -- fully

unclothed. i've been studying him since yesterday. i think i've actually -- the way to do the president is to start out with mr. rogers, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. then you add a littlejohn wayne. here we go, let's go over the ridge. put them together you got george herbert walker bush. that's the thing there. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies as a public service. next women veterans of the korean war are honored by the defense department. they reflect on their service as nurses and medical specialists during the korean war which lasted from 1950 to 1953. this about an hour and 25 minutes.

good afternoon. it is a pleasure to be able to welcome you here to the women in military service memorial because it is a place where we pay tribute to all of the women who have ever served beginning with the american revolution. of course, that includes the people, the women who served during the korean war. and we are delighted to join with the department of defense in paying tribute to these women today. as i think about the service of women during that time, i think about the korean war in many respects from the standpoint of women, i think about it being a nurses war, because it was army nurses serving in country, navy

nurses serving on the hospital ships and air force nurses who were flight nurses flying in and taking the wounded away to other hospitals, back in the states or someplace else. but there were other women who were serving here in the united states that never went overseas. we had women serving in okinawa and in japan who also served in support of that. now, we did have one very historic thing happen during that war, and that was that we had the first recall of women that we've ever had in this country. and let me tell you, when those women were recalled to duty who had served in world war ii, this

came as a great shock to their husbands. in many cases, some of those husbands were saying, what do you mean you're recalling? you're supposed to report for duty. i'm the one that should be reporting. but nobody called them. and theirives went. and at the start of the war, when you think about the size of the number of women we have serving today, some 15% of our armed forces, at that time there was only about 1% who were women. that was about 22,000 people at the start of the war, not people, but women. and one-third of those were in the health profession. now, by october of 1952, we were up to 48,972 and i suspect that during that war the total number

of women who served at one time or another may have been around 100,000, something like that. when you think of that in terms of the over 2.5 million women who served our country, that gives you some perspective of how many it was. now, it was as a result of the difficulty in getting women to come back in, the recruiting efforts they tried were not successful, as successful as they had been in world war ii. when we think about that, they had originally tried to get 1.5 million women to come in the service in world war ii. they were only able ever to get about 400,000. so i guess when you think of that as a comparison, it isn't all that much different. but one of the things that they did to try to encourage women and encourage parents to let

their daughters go into the service was that they created the defense advisory committee on women in the services. and one of the members of that group was the great actress helen hayes. and one of her quotations in support of women serving their country, we have etched in one of the glass tablets that form the skylight to the memorial. and her words are, all of us must work at patriotism, not just believe in it. for only by their young women offering services to their country as working patriots in the armed forces can our defenses be adequate. those words were true then. they're true today. so we had that happen. now, from the standpoint of the

memorial here in 2002 at our fifth anniversary, we opened our korean war exhibit which you'll find in the gallery on down that way. and in 2005 we published a book called -- right here it is "a defense weapon known to be of value," meaning women. it is about all of the service women. it isn't just about the nurses. it's about all the women who served, whether they were overseas in europe, where they were overseas in the pacific or serving in the united states or if they were serving in korea. so we're going to have this book on sale today for $5.00. if you don't have it, it's a wonderful book. it is the only book that's ever been written about the women

serving in korea, all of the women serving in korea. and then in 2007 when a navy nurse happened to be up going through a box in her attic came across a lot of pictures and things, and we had a special exhibit -- her name was nancy crosby, she died a couple, three years ago. we had a special exhibit of that. and in tribute to this observance today, we have put that exhibit up, and you'll see it on display there in the galle gallery. i hope you'll take a look at that. when i think of the korean war, i think very frequently of the words to me of brigadier general anna mae hayes, can chief of the army core and promoted to

brigadier general. she served in world were ii in the china, burma india theater. but in the korean war she served in korea. she told me it was far more difficult, the service -- thall met in korea than what she encountered in world war ii. i only wish she could be with us today. and one of the nurses wrote quite an extensive little thing that talked about sort of like a diary about her service. and i want to quote very briefly from it, because i've always been very touched by it. on august 6 th we arrived in chung one at noon with five new nurses. a school is again our home, but we're 17 to a room.

flees and rats are added to the flies and mosquitos. we can't open the windows for air because the rats walk the outside of the building to get in. they got busy over the next -- and by two days later they had their hospital open. and she wrote about august the 8th. we have patients ever place. every known type of wound and burn. men of all ages and from all walks of life. one private had lost an arm and was likely to lose a leg. he wanted to be the first to let his mother know she would get a letter from the war department and he didn't want to alarm her. big tears were dropping out of his dirty, bearded face, tired from lack of sleep, drawn by groans of pain. all of the men have

blood-stained letters they never had time to read. they're begging for water, but they're mostly due for surgery, no fluids. so fluids are limited. after that was explained, they just accepted it. sometimes when they heard our voices, the boys would think they were back in the states. one private said, my god, not a real american nurse? remove my bandages so i can see her. but he was blind. august 11th, that's three days later, we are being moved again. and that was very true of the service of the nurses in world war ii. so again, welcome to the women's memorial. we hope you'll take time to walk through, look at the exhibits

and feel free to come and visit us any time. thank you. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, the director of the korean war commemorative committee, colonel david clark. [ applause ] >> good afternoon and thank you, general vaught for your worm welcome and your hospitality in hosting us today at one oferics. on behalf of the secretary of defense and the entire d.o.d. 60th anniversary of the korean war commemoration committee, it is my privilege to welcome you to this very special women's history month observance honoring women who served during the korean war. it may well be that in the chronicles of what we call the

forgotten victory, the service of our women veterans has been too long overlooked and underappreciated. today in some small measure, we hope to rectify that by honoring their proud and meaningful legacy. first, let me begin by acknowledging some of the special guests who have joined us today. lieutenant general patricia dewho hoe, the first woman and first registered nurse to serve as the army surgeon general. ma'am. [ applause ] next brigadier general promotable lessee a. purser u.s. army deputy g 2, u.s. army operations plans and policy. [ applause ] finally representing the united states marine corps, i'd like to introduce brigadier general marcella j. monahan, currently

serving as the assistant deputy commandant, combat development and integration. ma'am, thank you. [ applause ] >> it is a distinct honor to have all of you here to honor you and our korean war veterans. after reviewing your biographies, i'm humbled and impressed by your many accomplishments over lopth, faithful and distinguished careers. given your critical positions and demanding schedules, i'm very grateful for your presence and support today. i'm sure much will be said today about barriers broken, milestones achieved and trails blazed. all part of the amazing assent of american women over the past half century. in my estimation, the greatest tribute to these officers is that their successes transcend gender. they are no longer viewed as successful female officers, but simply as successful officers who happen to be female, a

subtle but important distinction and an indicator that our great nation has embraced the vital role of the female warier. i also want to welcome major general liso young from the korean embassy currently serving as the defense attache, thank you for being with us. [ applause ] >> generals hora hoe, per ser, monahan, distinguished guests, veterans of the korean war, servicemen and women, students, family and friends. i'm delighted to be here today. the korean war commemoration committee is dedicated to honoring our co-reen war veterans for their service and sacrifice and to share sthar stories, and in so doing, educate the broader american public on the continuing relevance of the korean war and american history. in the past year and a half, we have crisscrossed the nation with one singular purpose, to shake the hands of our korean war veterans and thank