Please join me and welcoming these archivists. [applause] myself. L introduce y will be giving most of the presentation. I will be here for questions and answers. My banteered after i got in history from cal state San Bernardino in 2010. I started volunteering at the National Archives in riverside. In 2012, i became a student archivists. My masters degree in library and Information Science at that same time from san joses date university. In 2014, i moved to st. Louis and worked at the National Archives at st. Louis as a preservation technician. Two in 26 income i moved back to california and moved into my current role. I will turn it over to randy and he can give you his bio. Randy welcome everybody. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. I want to thank the friends of the North Hollywood library. For inviting us to come out here. I hope you enjoy the earlier events. I have been with the National Archives in Southern California since 1995. Filek a summer job as a clerk, pulling and refiling customer materials. That summer job has now lasted 24 years. Sometimes im still looking for a real job. I love what i do. Giving presentations and giving access of our holdings to the public. Are able to see the presentation earlier, james covered a lot of how to get the resources. Some of these have been posted on facebook. Some of these records have been used in washington dc. Others are digitized in our catalog. I will not tell you the whole story with all of these records. I will show you. That will make it more enticing to come out and visit my facility. I will go ahead and begin. There is our email addresses. That wee Business Cards can give you a little bit later. We have our telephone number there. That is our main line. We do have some social media accounts. We have facebook, twitter, tumbler. We make about eight postings every month, usually on what our Staff Members have found in our holdings. We also try to find things to celebrate Different Things going on each month. We really like our exposure on social media. That, are interested in if you want to go ahead and take out your phones, give us a like or two. If you enjoy these, give us the likes. So what do we hold . We hold a lots stuff. A lot of cool records. We have about 71,000 cubic feet of material. That is our facility in riverside alone. The National Archives in general holds about 5 million cubic feet of original records that are historically valuable. These of the created by different federal agencies and courts in Southern California, arizona, and clark county, nevada. Las vegas. What happens in vegas winds up in the National Archives, so be careful. [laughter] the records in our facility date from 1798 to 2003. Do we have a lot of materials that date back to the 1700s . California was not part of the u. S. Until the 1850s. This document here is stamped with a tax stamp. I got through part of this. My motherinlaw, who is from mexico, she got through about three sentences and said she needed some help. Very pleasing to the eye. A beautiful document. Well over 200 years old. Each is a little bit of history in the southwest united dates. Now that we have seen the oldest document we hold, i will give us. Little information this is a naturalization records dating back to 1851 created by the los angeles superior court. The bulk of our materials are after 1900, running to the 1970s. After that, must the court. Ecords we hold we hold the plans, the project records for all of this stuff. Was donetheir work after the 1938 floods. I mentioned earlier we have up to 89 different federal agencies that we hold records for. This is just a drop in the bucket. These are just some of the agencies we hold the most materials for. How are they maintained . Do we just have them in boxes on the floors, thrown all over the place . They are not arranged by topic or subject. Not like you would find in a library. For example, records related to world war ii, many agencies were involved in creating records at that time. Our records related to military bases. We keep the records in the original older order that we received them. That way, we can see during their course of business, what they were doing, the constant use and maintenance of those records. Of research may be covered by many different federal agencies. I will show you that a little. It later presentationed the earlier, yorty heard some of this, but i will go over it again. Each federal agency will have its own record group number. We call an office he of an agency a creator because they created the record. They have dozens and series of collections. The immigration and natural Naturalization Service, they would have had offices at every port of entry along the border, along the coast. Airports and even in places like bakersfield. At a certain time they could have had hundreds of offices. You have the record group of the agencies, and then all of those little offices are creating records. They create different little collections. Chinese exclusion act case files. Alien registration case files. A series of records can be comprised of little of one pager item to tens of thousands of cubic feet of material. We do have some series that are in very small boxes. Series ofhave one Court Records created by the los angeles District Court. It is well over 20,000 cubic feet. Over about 100 years. A lot of material. When agencies create records, they dont always make a subject or topic. They will create records according to a scheme that was best for their business purposes. They might be alphabetical or numerical. Those civil case files we have for the District Court in los are filed by a case number and indexed by party. Sometimes we have researches that want to look for in a of lawsuit that had to do with copyright. Who are the parties involved . What were the case numbers . Lets go look at the indexes and do some primary and secondary research. We will try to find out some of that stuff for you. We have pretty good indexes throughout all of our holdings. We can help you find stuff pretty quickly. Going back to that list, record , i expected to find all of this. I know you have done some preliminary research and you are interested in nasa. We have that report in the original. Pretty cool stuff. I think it is also online. , the bureau of Indian Affairs. One of our most use sets of records. Locating records by individual. We are going to assume that we have already done some research ahead of time. We will show you some topics. Some are online and some are on facebook. I wont read these off verbatim. I will just go through a little bit of the background of the agency that created it. And leave it up to you guys if you have more questions about these records. You can have conversations with us by coming into our office. Here are some of the questions we will ask you. What was the historical trend, issue, or event you are interested in. What was the name of individuals . If you have a date of birth or a very approximate time of birth. Where they were living. It does not have to be the exact address. County is find. Who were the federal agencies involved . If you dont know all this stuff, you may need to check some other primary and secondary sources. We can also help you locate some of this information. 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 Management. 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 researching these may be 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. 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 ask 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, next 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. So this entire process of that 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 individuals of japanese descent. Well have other countries represented here as well. And then we get finger prints. And then we get an f. B. I. Report. Now, just keep in mind that my office does not hold f. B. I. Records. This was a copy that was shared with the immigration and Naturalization Service and it was filed into that enemy alien case file so different agencies working together, putting stuff together in one file and there you have it. And the report was quite long. It will list the individuals who did the investigations, any kind of evidence they collected and anything that they needed to put into this file. And if we look at the end it says he was a produce dealer at the time. Its got to address where he was working. His occupation. So you get some pretty good stuff in there about an individual at that time. And again, these records are looked at at least four to five times a month in my office. People will come in and look at individuals that may have been family members or looking at it to put together like a Historical Perspective of different individuals. We will look at other materials related to chinese and chinese americans. They came in 1943. We will look at a couple of individuals you may or may not recognize. James wong how. Withal agencies involved enforcing the chinese exclusion ask at that time, at least a couple were the immigration and Naturalization Service in the u. S. Customs service. Will give you some sneak peaks of these records. Will first talk about anna may wong. She was an actress. Have, shen you may lived in elway at about 1838. The records that we found for her were from 1985. Record of the Naturalization Service. Angeles,16, los sometimes federal agencies like that really long name. For their sub offices. This comes out of the chinese exclusion act. Document. One theres a lot more information in there. This one, you look at the picture, it is quite captivating. Some information on her. I believe we have some social media posts on her. If you want to check out facebook. You can look later, either way. See some of the stuff we have on her. Then james wong how, born in 1898 in china, and the information we have is he lived in 1958. We found records on him in a couple of different places. Records from the imf and the District Court. Examples formore these records. These certificates, issued to mr. James wong how and his certificate saying he could leave the country and come back. Informationpersonal and financial information. Deposits with the bank of america, international branch. Is andhow tall he identify marks and scars. , his signature in chinese and english. An oath and everything else. Help of an archivist, you would say, i knew this guy was there in 1958. There was a stamp and the lower lefthand corner, when he was here in the 1930s. We know a couple of tricks and find more records. There would be a lot of questioning of these individuals. Are yourd ask, what names, what are all of your names . Who are all of your relatives what is your married name . What is your village look like . Can you tell me which house you then we have another individual who could corroborate your story and they would ask the same questions. If they matched up, you are in good shape. You would find some of these questionnaires on two or three different people in one file. They go on and on. One, they are asking questions of his mom. She was born in San Francisco, 1882, how long she buried her husband and so on. What was your fathers name . How ity children did you have will go through these quickly. We will go to the District Courts. They will say i know it let he lived there in l. A. In 1958. We founded naturalization record for him, dated 1958. You see good information, good information. Place of birth, date of birth, name of spouse, where she was born, how he came to the states anytime he was out. If you look at the bottom, if you could see it, his registration number, that is a quick key of getting hold of Something Like that if you can. He will also have a registration file as part of the archives system. The u. S. Citizenship and immigration services. If you have any questions of how to get a hold of these registration files, ask q and a. I can get you a Business Card or two. Back of the page, more government. There is his signature. If you didnt know who he was in already, you know more information about him now. The next topic, locate u. S. District Court Records. We will move through it pretty quickly. There is some pretty cool stuff. Again, this is one of those. What you need to know to find these records. Here are the courts we hold records for, that is the geographic area. Central district of california including los angeles, river , san diego, riverside, and santa ana. Southern district of arizona, phoenix, tucson. The district of nevada, las vegas. And then the arizona territorial court, 1912 and prior. I was going to ask if anybody knew why, but you cant go to the microphone right now. We can do that later. What do you need to know . In in general, names of pa