Pearl Harbor Bombed!
NBC Program Book
Annotated typescript, December 7, 1941;
Microphone, ca. 1938
Motion Picture, Broadcasting
& Recorded
Sound Division
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In addition to holding the most extensive radio broadcast collection
in the country (nearly three-quarters of a million recordings),
the Library of Congress offers researchers unparalleled print documentation
of the medium. The NBC Radio Collection at the Library includes
hundreds of thousands of scripts, business correspondence, bound
press releases, and programming documentation.
This annotated script of a December 7, 1941, news report on the
bombing of Pearl Harbor includes the announcer's markings for emphasis.
The NBC "program analysis" index card outlines all of the network's
news broadcasts of that day, including the break in regularly scheduled
programming to announce the tragic news from Pearl Harbor.
Other NBC documentation now at the Library outlines nearly every
program heard over the network throughout World War II, including
the debates which preceded our entry into the war. Described in
detail, for example, are programs aired in 1941 devoted to the Fight
for Freedom Committee, which promoted intervention and aid to Britain,
as well as programs devoted to the isolationist America First Committee.
Recordings of more than half of these programs are also in the
collections of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
Division. The Library's radio collections provide not only the means
to monitor the progress of World War II as experienced on the home
front, but, through the extensive Armed Forces Radio and Television
Service Collection, to hear American entertainment and information
as heard by the fighting American forces abroad.
The microphone pictured was used by Joseph Nathan Kane to broadcast
his Famous First Facts radio series of 1938.
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