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Saturday, July 07, 2001
AFTER
December 7, 1941
For some of our readers, the country's current state of alert may bring back memories of the nation's state of mind after a previous devastating attack on America, the Japanese surprise assault on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, 60 years ago in December of 2001.
The Post-Gazette, using techniques developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Seagate Technology, recently undertook a pilot project to convert microfilm copies of the Post-Gazette to digital form to make them available for viewing on the Internet. Through work done jointly by CMU and Seagate, known worldwide as a maker of hard drives and with research facilities in Pittsburgh, microfilms from the Post-Gazette library of newspapers have been converted to digital form and are being made available free for reading. The collection covers the period from Dec. 8, 1941 to January 31, 1942
Although these pages reflect the sometimes poor condition of 50-year-old microfilm and the not insignificant challenges of converting microfilm to digital form, they contain fascinating information about America and Pittsburgh at the beginning of World War II.
They trace a nation's journey from surprise and shock to anger and resolve, and form an unblinking record of the public discourse of those critical days, a discourse sometimes freighted with raw racial stereotypes.
We would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you have on exploring these back issues. Please e-mail your comments to ckurtz@post-gazette.com.
To read the Post-Gazette pages from the two months following the attack on Pearl Harbor click:
