Oral History Interview Handbook Senior Officer Oral History Program Question Annex

摘要

The Senior Officer Oral History Program (SOOHP), a part of the U S Army Military History Institute's (MHI) effort to collect significant portions of recent (20th Century) military history from the people who lived it. Several other MHI programs, including Division/Corps Commanders' Lessons Learned and Vietnam era Company Commanders' Lessons Learned, use predetermined question sets to gather information in a standard format. That greatly simplifies the process for the student interviewer. The commanders' lessons learned tend to contain many similarities and cover a very short portion of an officer's career (focused on a specific job). The SOOHP is essentially the story of a great soldier's life (primarily focused on his military experiences). However, unlike the others, SOOHP participants (USAWC students) have been required to develop a completely new question set each time an oral history is done. This paper presents a baseline set of questions for use in the SOOHP. It discusses tailoring of that set to capture the unique aspects of the subject's life. Additionally, it compares the baseline set with the tailored set of questions utilized in an actual SOOHP interview. (kr)