History

Summer 2012

Paul Philemon Kies Autograph Collection

From “Historically Yours”, by Hannelore Sudermann:

Paul Philemon Kies, a popular professor of English, was one of the keenest collectors at Washington State College. When he wasn’t teaching, advising, or shooting photographs on campus, he was filling his office and home with rare books, autographs, letters, and photographs…

…He started his collecting habit with first edition books, which he bought to show students. That led him to rare book catalogues, which led him to the autographs.

Browse a few of the items from Kies’s collection below, part of a digital collection at WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.

The » More …

Summer 2012

Alaska: A History

Claus-M. Naske ’70 PhD and Herman E. Slotnick
University of Oklahoma Press, 2011

In 1867 the Russia of Czar Alexander II was broke. As part of the solution, the country sold its North American lands to the United States for $7 million in a deal brokered by Secretary of State William Seward. The transaction angered many Russians, who felt they shouldn’t give up the colony. At the same time, it … » More …

Summer 2012

Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist of Emma Smith DeVoe

Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal ’04 PhD
University of Washington Press, 2011

At a time when women’s rights and politics are dominating our national discourse, it would be good to consider our past. Emma Smith DeVoe’s story, for example, enhances our understanding of our nation’s Women’s Suffrage movement as well as the history of women in Washington. DeVoe led the 1910 campaign in our state—organizing, giving speeches, and raising money for the cause. … » More …

Summer 2012

The atomic landscape

Seven decades later, we consider our plutonium legacy

Works considered in this article:

Plume
Kathleen Flenniken
University of Washington Press 2012

Made in Hanford: The Bomb that Changed the World
Hill Williams
Washington State University Press 2011

Making Plutonium, Re-Making Richland: Atomic Heritage and Community Identity, Richland, Washington, 1943-1963
Lee Ann Powell
Thesis, Department of History, Washington State University 2007

Reactor B From State Route 24 east of Vernita … » More …

Paul Kies and parts of his autograph collection at WSU

Summer 2012

Historically yours

Paul Philemon Kies, a popular professor of English, was one of the keenest collectors at Washington State College. When he wasn’t teaching, advising, or shooting photographs on campus, he was filling his office and home with rare books, autographs, letters, and photographs.

Robert B. O’Connor, a student, profiled Kies in 1970. It’s a portrait of “a unique personality” whose “office was so crowded with a lifetime of accumulation of everything imaginable that there was never any available chair space.”

As a young scholar from the rural Midwest, Kies learned his culture in Chicago from the Ringling family (as in the Ringling Brothers Circus) in … » More …

Spring 2012

Gallery: Life at Heart Mountain internment camp

George Hirahara and his family, including Frank ’48, had their lives in Yakima disrupted in 1942 when they were forced to relocate with about 10,000 other Japanese Americans to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Frank’s daughter Patti Hirahara has shared a number of items with Washington State University from her family’s internment experience. They include about 2,000 photographs and negatives, many of them showing daily life at Heart Mountain.

The gallery below shows a few scenes from the Heart Mountain internment camp: celebrations, school days, sports events, and daily routines.

The complete collection is housed at WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, where students, scholars, and descendants … » More …

Spring 2012

Sacred Encounters

“When I drive past this place it gives me a good-hearted, happy feeling,” says Quanah Matheson ’04, cultural resources director of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. At what is now Old Mission State Park, just off Interstate 90 at Cataldo, Idaho, Matheson is taking a breather from the rush of last-minute details prior to opening a major historical exhibit.

A graceful, whitewashed chapel, the Mission of the Sacred Heart, completed in 1853 and the oldest building in Idaho, tops a grassy knoll at the state park, but down below, the tribe has just completed a modern museum that is now the permanent home of an exhibit … » More …

Internment camp children photo by Frank Hirahara

Spring 2012

A Hidden History

In 1992, Frank Hirahara ’48 sent his daughter Patti to Yakima to help his elderly parents pack up their home for their move to Southern California.

What had at first seemed a chore turned into a treasure hunt as Patti unearthed letters, photographs, and official records that chronicled her family’s experience as Japanese Americans who had spent World War II in an internment camp. “These things were hidden all around the house,” she says. She discovered notes in the buffet, letters in the kitchen cupboard, and photo negatives tucked into books.

Frank’s grandfather Motokichi Hirahara came to Washington from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan in 1907. … » More …

Spring 2012

The Long Journey of the Nez Perce: A Battle History from Cottonwood to Bear Paw

Kevin Carson ’81
Westholme Publishing, 2011

In his foreword to the latest account of the Nez Perce War of 1877, Kevin Carson ’81 writes, “In my memory, there was never a time when our family was not fascinated by the saga of the Nez Perce.” Carson’s great-great-great grandfather, Levi Watrous, served as a scout during the Civil War, then moved to Columbia County, Washington, in 1872, where he made his living as a stockman. … » More …

Winter 2011

Bringing history and historian together

Historian Douglas Brinkley recently visited Seattle to interview William D. Ruckelshaus, the founding head of the Environmental Protection Agency and advisor to a variety of Northwest clean water and community groups.

Ruckelshaus first made the connection between the environment and public health shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School when he returned to Indiana as a young lawyer. In the office of the Indiana attorney general, Ruckelshaus was assigned to the Indiana Board of Health, where he noticed that many of the state’s health issues were tied to air and water pollution, he says. It was a foundation for his work a decade later defining … » More …