Recently, I completed a study of land ownership, stewardship, and land culture for an academic institution. The core purpose of this study was to trace the ownership of the campus back to the European contact period so that an evidence-based ownership statement could be issued. These statements provide opportunities for conversations about indigenous heritage and culture associated with the ancestral ground while also reminding people they are on native soil.
Category: Public History
Discussing the Impact of Disasters on a Community With Fox News
Various things make up the shared historical memory of a community. These narratives take assorted forms, but the most jarring materialize when an unthinkable tragedy strikes. Whether a storm or accident, the catastrophes are seared deeply into the collective memory of residents. They shatter many lives and became part of history in the aftermath — the shared experience remembered and passed down through the generations.
These large-scale disasters, which often change a community forever, are part of understanding the story of a place, so people want the disruptive occurrence documented. Thus in my community studies and social history practice, I sometimes do fieldwork centered on researching, documenting, and memorializing them. Often, the process involves oral history interviews, as people reflect and discuss recollections; for others, it happened so long ago that firsthand recall has faded, so the process involves archival research as stakeholders establish a remembrance archive.
One project I worked on in 2013 was the Flight 214 Remembrance Archive, which marked fifty years since the accident. On December 8, 1963, at 8:59 p.m. A Pan American jet on final approach to Philadelphia exploded in flight. That night, all 81 people on the jet perished instantly while hundreds of first responders rushed to a cornfield at the edge of the Delaware State Line. One firefighter answering the alarm was Stewart W. Godwin. While searching the debris field, he suddenly collapsed and died. He was the first North East Fire Company member to die in the line of duty.
Those connected with this tragedy don’t forget it; this year, as we marked fifty-nine years since the accident, was no exception. Too, major broadcast networks often mark the disaster. And this year, on December 8, 2022, the Fox Network asked me to discuss the disaster’s impact and how a northeastern Maryland town recalls it.
More on Researching Disasters
Historical Research into a Railroad Disaster: Greenwood, Delaware
Young Railroader Edwin Road Killed in Greenwood Explosion
Interview With WBAL About Hurricane Agnes
Delmarva Pandemic of 1918 Archive
Remembering Three Mile Island in Maryland
Remembering Japanese Internment
As today marks the 80th anniversary of the Feb. 19, 1942, presidential order authorizing the internment of Americans with Japanese ancestry, I recalled an April day in 2016 in Bridgeton, NJ. On that Wednesday as spring got underway, I spent a delightful morning talking with 92-year-old Frank Hitoshi Ono.
At the time I was doing some fieldwork related to developing a program for the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center in Cumberland County, NJ. The Center presents the stories of relocated Japanese Americans, wartime refugees, and migrant laborers to the “largest vegetable factory on earth.” As part of the research, I met with a number of people including Mr. Ono.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Mr. Ono, 18, was living in San Pedro, CA, where his family had a tuna fishing business. Worried that people of Japanese ancestry would act as spies, the United States Government ordered about 120,000 people, mostly U.S. citizens, placed in internment camps.
This forced relocation included the Ono family, the teenage college student ending up at Camp Manzanar, CA. As the war dragged on, a large-scale commercial agricultural enterprise in South Jersey, Seabrook Farms, needed employees due to the wartime labor shortage. Consequently, about 2,500 residents of the relocation centers were permitted to come to the fields of Cumberland County to help harvest crops and support processing operations. Mr. Ono’s family was in that group.
After the war, Mr. Ono got a job with a radio sales and service company in Bridgeton and within a couple of years, he established his own business in Millville, the Arrow Radio & TV Sales & Service Company. As television came in and tubes gave way to transistors and other things he kept up with the times. He operated the business for about 40 years, eventually selling it when he retired in 1985.
He had many talents and hobbies, but in retirement, he focused on educating people about this period of history, and he was deeply involved with the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center.
I thoroughly enjoyed that spring morning six years ago and still recall his rich, vivid stories. I was fortunate to have met Mr. Ono, and have the opportunity to directly learn about a different time and place in our nation’s past. It’s an experience I will never forget so as my newsfeed alerted me to the 80th anniversary of Japanese Internment the conversation from some years earlier was still fresh in my mind. As Mr. Ono remarked, this is a story that more people need to know, and I was thankful that he shared the accounts and his photos with me.
Frank Hitoshi Ono, 97, of Bridgetown passed away on Sunday, September 5, 2021.
For More on Seabook Village and Japanese Internment See
A photo album of the visit with Mr. Ono on Facebook
For the history of Seabrook Village see this article on the Densho Encyclopedia.
Disasters Are Part of a Community’s History and Should be Remembered
A story about the passage of 37 years since a sudden, life-shattering tragedy hit San Diego came up in my Delmarva Newsfeed yesterday.
On Friday, September 25, 1978, a beautiful, sunny southern California Day, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Fight 182 was on final descent into the airport when it collided with a Cessna. Thirteen seconds later, the Boeing 727 smashed into the ground.
In those unimaginable few seconds, 144 people perished in the widely observed incident that morning at the end of the workweek. So many lives (family members, the community, and the first responders) were shattered at that moment.
A moving FB memorial page and an article from the aviation news site, NYCAviation reminded me of a similar experience in Cecil County with the “flight 214 Remembrance Program.” On December 8, 2013, family members. the community and first responders paused to mark the passage of 50 years since the Pan American World Airways crashed at the edge of Elkton.
The purpose of our program was to honor the memory of those who died when the big plane exploded in flight and went down in a cornfield. It also honored the emergency personnel answering the alarm as periodic flashes of lighting illuminated a scene that would live with those firefighters and police officers throughout their lives. As that day in 2013 marked the passage of a half-century, we invited those affected to come together to honor the memory of those who perished and the generation of emergency personnel who answered the call.
The experiences of the two communities, Elkton and San Diego, were similar in that unimaginable disasters struck, altering the lives of so many people. For the Elkton community, no one living here would forget the sudden explosion in the sky on a stormy Sunday night in Cecil County as a thunderstorm swept through the area. For the firefighters and police officers, It was something they, too, would never forget as they desperately searched for survivors in the cornfield. One firefighter from the North East Volunteer Fire company, Steward W. Godwin, fell in the line of duty that night—while combing the debris field, he suddenly collapsed and died.
In San Diego, the PSA Flight 182 Memorial Committee is working to have a maker placed at the crash site. As the group noted, “PSA 182 is a major part of San Diego’s History. The memory of that day is still vivid in the minds of many San Diegans and continued to affect them as well as many of the first responders who were on duty . . . Our hope is to create a memorial that will honor the victims, their families, the neighborhood, and the law enforcement and emergency workers that still live with the memories of what they saw that day. The memorial will be a place of peace and reflection that can be visited . . . .”
Late last night, I looked over the committee’s FB page as they get ready to gather on the 37th anniversary of the incident this Friday, September 25, at 9:02 a.m. in San Diego. For those in Elkton who answered the call and for the family members on the Maryland crash, this is something we relate to as you read the posts, remarks, and comments. It was a moving experience reading the page, and I hope to read soon that they have the support of the City and can place a memorial on the crash site.
In Elkton, Mayor Joe Fisonia, several years before he was elected to public office, had a memorial placed on the site here. At the time, he was the president of the homeowners association in the area, and he is also a first responder with the Singerly Fire Company.
A sudden, horrible tragedy of this scope is part of a community’s history, as the San Diego committee noted. It is a part of Elkton’s history too.