This goes back to 1775. Weve been had to raffle tickets. Somell be giving away books. Inase join me at this time welcoming randy and james. [applause] i am going to introduce myself. Randy will be giving most of the presentation. I will be here for questions and answers. Ive volunteered after i got my ba in history in 2010. I began volunteering at the National Archives. In 2012, i became a student technician. Degree inasters Library Science at that same time. In 2014, i went to st. Louis and worked at the National Archives at st. Louis. In 2016, i moved back to california. Im going to turn over to randy. He can give you his bio. Thank you. Welcome. I want to thank the wonderful introduction. I want to thank our friends at the North Hollywood library and the sherman oaks friends of the library asking us to come out. I hope you enjoyed the earlier events. I have been with the national in Southern California since 1995. I took a summer job, just pulling materials upon request. That is lasted 24 years. I like to tell people i am still looking for a real job. I do love what i do. I love giving the presentations. See there able to presentation earlier, james covered how to find resources. Im going to show you resources you can find in my facility. Some of these have been posted on facebook. Used inthese have been washington dc. Others have been digitized in our catalog. This makes it more enticing to come out and visit. I guess i will begin. I think weve covered that already. This is our email address. I have Business Cards we can give you later. This is our main line. This is where you can send requests or questions you may have. We do have some social media. We have facebook. We have twitter. We make about eight postings every month. To find things that celebrate Different Things that go on each month. Like our exposure on social media. If you are interested in that, do that. And and whatnotlikes and interact. We hold a lot of stuff, a lot of cool records. We have about 71,000 cubic feet of material. Thats just our facility alone. The National Archives in general holds about 5 million cubic feet of original records. By 89 different federal agencies. We all know what clark county, nevada is. Las vegas. Youve been there. What happens in vegas winds up in the National Archives, so be careful. Hold, actions of the government, its interaction with the public, documents. Facility from our 1798 to 2003. We have a lot of materials that eight back to the 1700s . Is documents from spanish land grants that were given. If the area of arizona today. Family outanted to a there. This document is stamped. Written basically in spanish. I always thought i could read spanish and speak it well. I passed the ap exams and everything. Does anyone know how to read old english . Its the same thing trying to read old spanish. My motherinlaw, she got through about three sentences and needed help. It is very pleasing to the eye. Its a beautiful document. It shows a little bit of history in the southwest united states. Oldestt weve seen the document we own, im going to give you information on the oldest records we have created by a government agency. Its a naturalization record. The bulk of our material is ther 1900, running through 1970s. Mostly Court Records. Some of the other agencies we hold records for, the bureau of Indian Affairs. The bureau of Land Management, the immigration and Naturalization Service. Nasa. The National Park service. The u. S. Army corps of engineers. Area, look around this anything that has been encased in concrete, thats most likely the army corps of engineers. A lot of their work was done. Heard ofyou may of those floods. They happen in Southern California. I mentioned early we have different federal records. This is just a drop in the bucket. How are they maintained . They are not arranged by topic or subject. They are not arranged by topic, subject matter, anything like that like you would in the library. Manythe second world war, agencies were involved in creating records at that time. A couple of examples we would not pull out and put them back. We keep the records in the original order. Can see during the course of business what they were doing during the creation and the maintenance of the records. This may be covered by many different federal agencies. I will show you that later. Breakdown, if you attend the presentation earlier, you already heard some of this. Owne agency will have its number that identifies the body of records made by a certain federal agency. There may be a handful. We call it a creator because they created the records. They may have had dozens of collections. Example, the ins, they would about offices in every court of entry. If you think of that, the immigration and Naturalization Service had hundreds of offices. All of those different offices are creating records. The chinese exclusion case files files, aemy alien case series of records can be comprised of as little as one tens ofitem to thousands of cubic feet of material. We have some records that are a very small box. We have one series of Court Records created by the Los Angeles District Court that is over 20,000 cubic feet. Thats over about 100 years. When agencies create records, they dont always create a subject or topic. According to a scheme that works best for business purposes. They might be alphabetical or numeric. Example, those civil cases that we have from the ,istrict court in los angeles they are filed by a case number. Sometimes you have researchers that want to look for any lawsuit that had to do with copyright. Who are the parties involved . Look at the secondary research. Indexest pretty good throughout our holdings and we can help you find stuff quickly. List, hereto that are some numbers to go with those agencies. I dont expect you to understand this now. If you Say Something like i want onsee everything you have 255. I know you are interested in nasa. Weve got that report. Thats pretty cool stuff. This, this ist one of our most used sets of records. Questions come into our office. Naturalization sees a large spike in research right now. People are looking at the chinese exclusion files and the internees of japanese during world war ii. He National Parks service, had gone to the grand canyon. Weve got records on the administration of those parks. The u. S. Army corps of engineers, you can see that. Every agency gets its own number and special identifier. James k u. S. Customs. Well done. Good job. I wanted to make sure he is still awake over there. Locating records about individuals. Youvegoing to assume done some research ahead of time. We will show you some topics. We will show you some original records we have digitized and put online. Some of them exhibits. Im not going to read the records to you verbatim line by line. We will just go through the background. Up to youleave it guys if you have more questions about those records. Riverside is only a couple of hours away. Have this, you can do it by email or telephone or walking into our office. These are some the questions we will ask you. What was the historical issue you are interested in . What were the names of the individuals involved . Oryou have a date of birth approximate time of birth. Where they were living. It doesnt have to be the exact address. County is fine. Who were the federal agencies involved . This, dont know all of you may need to check some other sources to find some of that information. We can also help you locate that information. I know he was a land survey or for the bureau of Land Management. Do you have a time. . We can find some of this for you. We are really good at doing that. The first topic, what do we need to know . Aliens,r ii, enemy japanese internment. They may be some of the information your interested in finding out. Federal agencies may have been involved in these programs at that time. Immigration and naturalization had a good presence in that. Relocation. War your topic of research might cover the records of many federal agencies. Thats what we are help there to help you determine. The information, what you need to know. Yuma, arizona in 1944. He was born april 27 in san diego. The records that we found him in thethis is on exhibits in National Archives five years ago , it showed signatures of individuals. 47. Record is from group 100 his document is a statement. This is a questionnaire. Your name,ing to ask your present address, the last two addresses, he was living in arizona in 1944. Other personal information, gender, height, weight, married status. They want to know parents names. If you dont know a lot about some of your ancestors, you can put this together. So listing two individuals, a brother and a sister and saying theyre both in poston, arizona. Which, 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 this gentleman went to Elementary School and a high school. Sometimes we dont know that about our ancestors 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 asking about 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 27 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 on his next page 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 or an immigration and naturalization record, but this is something the Selective Service 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 service. Ill show you a 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 apprehended. This gentleman was apprehended on december 8, 1941. He was given to the i. 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, in 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. So, 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 mr. Hiratsuka, he was a produce dealer at the time. Its got the 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. Moving on from there, were going to look at some other materials. These are related to chinese and chinese americans. Dating from 1883 to 1943. And were going to look at a couple of individuals you may or may not recognize the first one. Anna may wong. And then james wong howe. And federal agencies involved with enforcing the chinese exclusion acts at that time, at least a couple were the immigration and Naturalization Service and the u. S. District courts and the u. S. Custom as custom service. So again im just going to give you some sneak peeks on some of these records. Im going to talk first about anna may wong. Im sure many of you know who she was. She was an actress. Information you may have about her. She lived in l. A. About 1938 and the record we found for her for you to look at is from record group 85. Records of the immigration and nationalization service. District 16, which was los angeles. San pedro substation. Sometimes federal agencies like to have really, really long names for there sub offices. This record come out of the chinese exclusion act case files. And i just chose one document out of her file for you. Theres a lot more information in there for her, but this one, you look at the picture, quite captivating. A Little Information on her. So this one i believe we have a couple of social media posts on her so if you want to again check out facebook and i can wait for a moment if you want or you can look later, either way. Whatever works best and you can see some of the stuff that we have on her. And then james wong howe. Born in 1898 in china and the information we have is he lived in l. A. About 1958. So we found records on him in a couple of different places. Records from the i. N. S. As well as records from a District Court in los angeles not too far from here and i have a few more examples out of his records for you. So, this certificate was issued to mr. James wong howe as a return certificate basically saying that he could leave the country and come back at that time. It has some basic personal information, financial information, says he had a deposit of 1,000 to bank of America International branch. Says how old he is, how tall he is, identifying marks. Scars and things like that. Current address in the u. S. Signature in chinese and u. S. With an oath and everything else. With the help of an archivist, you would come in and say i know this guy was there about 1958. We would have found this record for you. You see the stamp in the lower lefthand corner where he was here in the 1930s. Sometimes we just ask you a few questions. We know a couple of tricks, we find some more records for you. So, there will be a lot of questioning of these individuals in these files. They would ask things like what are your names, what are all of your names . What is your birth date, who are all of your relatives. What is your married name. What does your village look like back in china. Can you tell me which how you house you lived on, on which row, who lived next door to you and things like that and then theyd ask another individual who could corroborate your story and if everything matched up, you were usually in pretty good shape. You may find some of these questionnaires on two or three people in one individuals file. They go on and on. In this one theyre basically asking questions of his mop. His mom. How long she was married to her husband. What was your mothers name . I dont remember. Usually not a good answer. What was your fathers name . How many children do you have . What are their names . Where are they living . All this identifying information to be sure that the information that you were given matches everybody elses. I will go through these quickly in the interest of saving some time, so now we move to the District Courts and that question that somebody may have had that said i know he lived there in l. A. In 1958. So we found a naturalization record for mr. Howe dated about 1958. Shows some really good information. Its basically all of his personal information, place of birth, date of birth. Name of his spouse. Where she was born. How he came to the states and anytime he was out, all of his methods of travel. Interestingly enough, if you look at the very bottom, his alien registration number. That is a really good key to get ahold of Something Like that if you can because hes also going to have an alien registration file that may be part of the National Archive system or may be held by the the immigration and Naturalization Service, now the u. S. Citizenship and immigration service. If you have any question, check with me during the q a. If we dont have the time, i can get you a Business Card or two and then you can send me a request information for th