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289 Idaho Voices The Importance of Oral Histories Robert C. Sims discusses the importance of oral histories. Interviewer: During the writing that stems from your interviewing, do you have any feelings about ways to integrate using those kinds of sources in traditional kinds of writing? Sims: Well, it depends on the way you seek to do the writing—at least what your purposes are in it. Now the study I mentioned earlier about JapaneseAmerican contributions to Idaho’s economic growth doesn’t really call that much for analyzing the human experiences. It’s much more a study of impact , just as the topic suggests. But if the writing is intended to be more of a history of a people or a history that partakes of people’s feelings as well as discrete economic circumstances, then obviously it has a lot of impact. A lot of things that I have available to me, information that I got out of those interviews, I think really form the heart of the things I’ll be trying to write about when I write about Camp Minidoka. Because that really is the thing I’m trying to deal with there. Not an administrative history of the camp as much as a history of the people who were in the camp. And that kind of information that you can get from an oral interview is far preferable to some statistical analysis or some flow chart of administrative responsibility for the camp. Even though I have those things and understand how the camp was operated, the benefit of the oral interviews give me some sense of what it was like to exist in there. You just can’t replace that. * * * Merle W. Wells describes the poor state of historical records in Idaho in the 1940s. Interviewer: Were there any problems, Merle, initially getting access to those records [i.e., state papers]? 290 Idaho Voices: Historians Wells: Oh, no, other than the way they were arranged and all that. . . . We had a frightful time getting at the governor’s files. That we knew were in governor’s vault and that was years trying to find somebody who knew where our governor’s vault was. . . . [W]e finally found a custodian there who actually knew where they were. And I remember, quite clearly, he opened it up and I looked at it a little and really wanted to get in although I didn’t have much time right then. I was about to go back down. But I decided not even to try to look at it at all. Because that vault was filled tighter than any other I’ve ever seen. I was positive that if we began to look at it then, we’d never be able to get them in and the door shut again. Interviewer: (Laughter) Is that right? Wells: Oh yes, they were just solid right at the door. And, we could see, the only way you’d be able to get in there and look at them would be to take everything out, or at least, well, maybe not quite everything. There’d be some—but it was really tight there. [But if I took any out, it would have been impossible to get them back in.] Even if we’d had a governor’s mouse that wanted to get in, he wouldn’t have had space. So, about that next summer , I went in and got permission not only to look at them but to get the whole thing organized because it was plain that we’d never be able to get them back in once we got them out. Short of having the same kind of problem that nobody could find anything. Note Robert C. Sims was interviewed by Stacy Ericson, January 18, 1981, Boise, ID, transcript (OH1266) Idaho Oral History Center/Idaho State Historical Society, 3. Used with permission of Idaho State Historical Society. Merle W. Wells was interviewed by William E. Tydeman, December 5, 1991, Boise, ID, transcript (OH1299) Idaho Oral History Center/Idaho State Historical Society, 234–35. Used with permission of Idaho State Historical Society. ...

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