Where This Collection Began
In the spring of 2007, Bernard and graduate students in the University of Houston's Instructional Technology Program partnered with Houston Public Television (KUHT) to build an educational website supporting Ken Burns's documentary The War. The result — The War Experience: Memories of World War II — invited UH students and the public to create and share digital stories about the war. Several of the stories featured on this page trace directly back to that project, including "Documenting World War II: Through the Lens of a Camera," "Kinderlandverschickung," and "Missing in Action: The Story of Paul D. Stein and the Lost Battalion." The same collaboration is also how Bernard first connected with Roman Ohnemus and later taught him to create his own digital stories. About half of the students who took part interviewed their own family members for their stories.
The site's most ambitious feature was "Share Your Story," an upload system meant to let veterans and their families submit their own multimedia stories directly — with plans to send completed stories to the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project. In practice, few submissions came in, and Bernard's own honest retrospective on the project points to why: the only public announcement was a 30-second on-air spot that didn't even include a link to the site, and the submission tools assumed more comfort with multimedia technology than many of the intended contributors — most in their 80s — actually had.
Read the full account in Bernard's paper, A University/Public Television Collaboration to Create and Use Digital Stories.
WWII in the Pacific
Student stories about the war in the Pacific — some of which also appear in the by-year Student Digital Stories section.
Beyond the Pacific
A hand-picked selection from Bernard's broader WWII collection — stories beyond the Pacific theater, from the Holocaust to the home front. Some of these also appear in the by-year Student Digital Stories section.
Roman Ohnemus
Bernard's father, Belvin H. Robin, served as navigator alongside B-25 pilot Roman Ohnemus in the Pacific. Decades later, Bernard tracked Roman down and recorded his memories — of the crew, of specific missions, and of the war itself — now a growing collection of its own, built from oral history, a written account, and Roman's own digital stories.