Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in Japan: attending school, living arrangements, life in wartime Japan; reactions to Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombs; attending Osaka University; joining the United States Army; experiences in basic training; joining a meteorological station in Alaska; moving to Los Angeles; finding a job as an architectural draftsman; meeting his wife; moving to Minnesota and finding a job at Honeywell; getting married; attending dental school at the University of Minnesota; joining the Navy Dental Corps; private practice; raising a family; visiting Japan post World War II.

Interviewed by: James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in a small southern Minnesota Norwegian-American community; community life: school, friends, social activities, dating, Boy Scout activities; the depression; student life at a small Minnesota college; joining the Marines; getting married far from home during the war; going overseas; encounters with the Japanese; working with Sperry-Rand technicians to improve military equipment; serving with the movie star Tyrone Power; cross country travel during the war; entering Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped and serving on occupation duty in Japan; returning home: finding a job, raising a family; early 1950s polio epidemic; running for county political office.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in a Catholic house; participating in Boy Scouts; clothing, fashion, and style in the 1920s; the influenza epidemic of 1918-19; holiday celebrations; having Civil War veterans as guest speakers in his elementary school; graduating from law school and taking a job as a assistant country attorney; getting married; being drafted and going through basic training; joining the CIC; working with German-Jews and being in the IPW (Interrogation of Prisoners of War); establishing military governments in Germany; crossing the Rhine and securing the surrender of German towns; involvement in the occupation of Germany; returning home, raising a family, and continuing to practice law; involvement with the founding of Medtronic.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include the effects of the Great Depression; participating in the Boy Scouts and other neighborhood activities (tackle football, “capture the flag”, Whist); employment directly after high school; being deferred from the draft to finish education but deciding to enlist anyway; pilot training (basic, advanced, fighter, and gunnery training); life on an Air Force base in India; combat missions behind enemy lines including strafing, bombing, dive-bombing, and dogfights; interactions with Chinese and British troops; taking leave in Calcutta and Nepal; military life: conditions of runways, sleeping arrangements, and sending and receiving mail; assimilation back into the Lanesboro community; working for Honeywell on projects from the King Khalid Military Complex in Saudi Arabia to the Southdale Shopping Center; raising a family on the fringes of the suburbs.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up with a strict mother; topography of his hometown and the appearance of his house; involvement in horse breeding programs on the farm; the “invisible caste system” in Germany; taking in refugees from East and West Prussia; apprenticeship programs; German culture: wedding celebrations, division of sexes, emphasis on athletic superiority, traditional funerals, Christmas celebration; his hometown being carpet bombed by the British; participation in the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth; working on farms; hometown being taken over by British, Scottish, and eventually American troops; Germany post World War II; farm/agriculture training; developing a relationship with his future wife; moving to the United States; involvement in the poultry business and successful farming operations; becoming a part of the Jennie-O corporation in Minnesota; keeping family connections in Germany; involvement in the Rotary Club and awards.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life during the Great Depression; attending Edison High School and getting involved with business at the University of Minnesota; visiting her husband (boyfriend at the time) during his National Guard training in Louisiana; being married during wartime; following her husband from military base to military base; working for General Mills; greeting her husband upon his return from war; the real estate market post World War II; building their own house and moving out of the city; the changing social climate of the United States post World War II.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include being involved with the Boy Scouts; playing the trumpet; National Guard training in Louisiana; mobilization prior to Pearl Harbor; being one of the first men from the United States in the European Theater; returning home for officers training; being selected for flight training; being ordered to New Guinea; life in New Guinea: training missions, camp facilities; relocation to the Dutch East Indies; running artillery spotting missions in the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines; rescuing a Japanese prisoner from Filipino guerillas; experiencing the Japanese surrender firsthand; using the GI Bill to pay for college; life after the war: starting a family, graduating from college; finding a job; building a home.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include Norwegian childhood activities; celebrating Norwegian holidays; the school systems in Norway; learning several languages and pursuing his interest in the arts; interactions with Edvard Munch; German occupation of Norway; being arrested for singing in public; being arrested while working at a shipyard; being arrested while attending university; being sent to Buchenwald; hard labor in Alsace; being liberated by the Swedish; joining the Norwegian Army Intelligence Corps; traveling to the United States on a scholarship from Saint Olaf; experiences at Saint Olaf; meeting his wife and beginning his teaching career; traveling and teaching in Ethiopia; having children; leading study abroad trips; becoming Director of International Studies; becoming Professor of Art History.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and opportunities for a child growing up in South Central Minneapolis during the Great Depression; work opportunities in the late 1930s; riding the rails; migrant farm work; joining the army at Fort Snelling; pre-war service in the Coast Artillery; attending officers training; service in the 3rd Armored Division; service and combat with the 2nd Ranger Battalion including the D-Day assault on Omaha Beach; service in the post-war Army of Occupation in Europe; work opportunities at home; working for the airport police and later the airport maintenance department; work considerations as the head of airport maintenance; reflections on being a veteran; suburban growth.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include supporting his mother and siblings after his father died; being on welfare during the Great Depression; hitchhiking from California to Minnesota and back on a furlough; joining the paratroopers and jump training/physical fitness training; joining forces with British troops and the FFE (French resistance troops); having his legs run over by a tank and spending time at a hospital in Liege; interactions with German citizens; being shot in the chest right before the war ended; attending St. Cloud State College; working for Goodyear and his numerous promotions; quitting Goodyear and selling cabinets; making contacts and becoming one of the top cabinet suppliers in the Midwest; becoming involved in politics and the Minnesota Multi-Housing Association; retiring and the benefits of military service.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up in a supportive family during the hard economic times of the Great Depression; his family's work with a barnstorming flying circus; youth activities when money was scarce; working to finance his education; entering the service; training to be a pilot and navigator; service in Europe and preparations to deploy to the Pacific; returning home to his new family; working; establishing a home in the postwar years; completing his education and building a career in a large insurance company; rising to a senior position in the insurance firm; real estate development projects in the Twin Cities and around the nation; family life and suburban expansion in the 1940s through the 1970s.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life during the Great Depression; joining the National Guard, being mobilized; training in Louisiana, helping construct the military camp; being shipped to Northern Ireland, volunteering for the Rangers and Ranger training; preparing for combat in North Africa; battling the Vichy French on the Bay of Arzew; the assault on Sened Station; being promoted after becoming sick and failing to travel with his unit to Sicily; preparing for the invasion of Italy; contracting yellow jaundice in Italy; firefight with Germans which led to his capture; being interrogated and moved to Oflag 64 in Poland; life in an American officers internment camp; marching through Poland in the winter to Hammelburg; being liberated, recaptured, and transported to Moosburg; being liberated and returning home; getting called out of Inactive Reserve to spend time in Korea; owning his own business, raising a family, and being involved with Veteran's Associations.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in North Carolina: attending school, living arrangements; moving to Minnesota; marriage to Orville Freeman; life in wartime Washington, D.C.; her many political, civic, and social activities as wife of a Minnesota Governor who later became Secretary of Agriculture in the cabinets of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; the evolution of politics and social issues; raising a family; working for the Girl Scouts in the U.S. and internationally.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include being raised by his poor grandparents during the Great Depression: shooting deer for food, making homemade wine, being bullied at school; being taught to box by local boxers; electricity being installed into his home and dirt roads being paved; joining the National Guard as a quest for excitement; deciding to join an airborne division; airborne training: preliminary, jump school, night jumping, desert jumping; the horrendous conditions on a military ship from New York to Liverpool; running low on ammunition and out of food in France; being dropped behind enemy lines; abandoning friendships during the war; impact of war on civilians; reorientation into civilian life: finding work, supporting a family, going to movie theaters.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up in rural segregated Texas during the 1920s and 1930s; working hard with a strong supportive family to overcome prejudice and discrimination to do well in school and become a fighter pilot; training and service as a pilot and air traffic controller; building a successful post World War II career in and out of the military despite racial discrimination.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in a German family; political activity of her parents; exposure to anti-Semitism; exposure to the war with England; moving to Poland and back to Germany; suffering in postwar Germany; going to school in England; going to school in Heidelberg; life as an actress; being sponsored to live in the United States; attending the University of Minnesota; marriage to businessman Norman Mears; traveling the world; visiting her family in Germany; Germany's postwar rebuilding process.

Interviewed by: James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include the shortage of food during the Great Depression; childhood activities: Boy Scouts, hunting deer, organizing a biking club; infantry training in Tennessee; training exercise accidents; becoming a radio operator; sailing to the South Pacific on a military ship; being exposed to diseases and physical problems during training in the South Pacific; living conditions on New Guinea and interactions with natives; the treatment of infantry by commanding officers; securing beaches and battling the Japanese on the Philippines; working as a lifeguard on the Philippines after the fighting had ended; participating in the occupation of Japan; filing for unemployment; working as an engineer and electrician.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up in rural on a farm during the Great Depression in rural southern Minnesota; early schooling; the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940; enlistment in the U.S. Navy and service in the Pacific Theatre; his eyewitness account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; service in Australia and following the World War II.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include attending high school during World War II; rationing and food stamps; the atmosphere of the University of Minnesota during the 1940s; finding work at 3M in developmental engineering; involvement with international marketing; the rise of the 3M corporation and the development of a copy machine department; role as Vice President of the Duplicating Products Division; creating manufacturing plants in Europe; participation in the Operations Committee; interactions with company leader Bill McKnight; becoming Vice President of Administration; treatment of employees and internal promoting; serving on the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce; marriage and raising a family; involvement with the Winter Carnival.

Interviewed by: James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up on a farm in rural Arkansas; community life: school, church, social life; work and economic life in the Great Depression; working for the circus; joining and serving in the pre-World War II army in Hawaii; being transferred to Fort Snelling; the Armistice Day Blizzard; rapid promotion; work and life in the army at Fort Snelling as the senior sergeant; married life and housing at Fort Snelling and in the Twin Cities during the war; service in the occupation of Japan and in the Korean War; returning to Minneapolis to work as Sergeant Major in the Buzza Building on West Lake Street.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up during the Great Depression; education and service in the U.S. Army in Europe; creation and evolution of 3M's health care products group; international growth and development of 3M's global business; civic and community involvement.

Interviewed by: James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in a small rural German-American community during the Great Depression; the hardships of 1930s small business ownership; encounters with bootleggers and gangsters; school and social activities in a 1930s small town; service in the army; heavy combat in the infantry in Germany; dealings with German civilians, prisoners of war and displaced persons; options for a returning soldier; finding work and a career; marriage and creating a family; county politics and working as a county highway engineer; ongoing changes in county life; entering the state legislature and changes in state politics during his tenure.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include living through the Great Depression; listening to the radio and wanting to become a radio announcer; enrolling at the University of Minnesota pre-med; getting involved in the University of Minnesota radio station (WLB); feeling naïve to the events leading up to World War II; enlisting and being activated just prior to graduating from college; going through basic medical training; fighting in a jungle environment in the Philippines; being wounded in Okinawa; the role of the Red Cross; recovering from his injuries in several hospitals; getting a job at WMIN in Saint Paul; receiving his B.A. from the University of Minnesota; transitioning to television at Channel 11 (eventually KARE 11); being a television pioneer in the 1950s; interviewing celebrities (Hubert Humphrey, Jerry Lewis); being involved in the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) and experiences as the civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up during the Great Depression; education and work for Northern Pacific; service in the U.S. Naval Air Corps during World War II; involvement in the growth of Northern Pacific, its merger with other railroads to form Burlington Northern Inc., evolution of the railroad and related transportation industries; and his civic and other corporate work.

Interviewed by: James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include living in a predominantly German community; housing situation: outside toilet, heating, washing clothes; life during the Great Depression; popular events: weddings, funerals, birthdays, Christmas, 4th of July; growing up in the public school system; volunteering for the Navy; attending Gustavus Adolphus College; going into fire control training after boot camp; repairing submarines on a tender; life on a submarine; encountering and attacking Japanese ships; going back to college on the GI Bill; attending Gustavus Adolphus College, the University of Arizona, and Washington State University; starting an engineering company with a friend; humble beginnings to a successful engineering firm; family life in the 1950s.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include spending several years with his grandparents after his mother's death; his family difficulties during the Great Depression and his father's struggle to provide for his family; neighborhood and school activities; working in several butcher shops as a teenager; joining the Norwegian Air Force; pilot's training; personalities encountered; flying agents and supplies into occupied Norway; experiences with the Norwegian Crown Prince; attending Saint Olaf College; rising in position in Northwest airlines from mail delivery to one of the airline's top pilots; developments in the airline industry from 1945 through the mid 1980s.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include being the oldest of seven siblings and having to take care of her brothers and sisters; childhood activities: ice skating, jacks, and jumping rope; grocery shopping and the abundance of specialty stores prior to World War II; guesthouse and boardinghouse living in California; being able to receive a vehicle license without driving experience; segregation of the armed forces and the overall climate of the segregated South; the responsibilities of a military wife; relocating (living in twenty-eight different places in fifteen years); life in Japan in the 1950s; the relationship between the Japanese and the Americans; life in Germany: interactions with Germans, military housing, schooling, and the salt mines.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life during the Great Depression; working as a teacher and basketball coach; moving to Washington D.C. to attend college; life in Washington D.C.; being drafted into the Air Force; being involved with the airplane allocation process after World War II; participation in the Brass Hat Squadron; traveling the world to decommission planes; accomplishments as head of CAB; becoming president of Northwest Airlines (NWA); dealings while at NWA: fleet composition, passenger traffic, implementation of new technology, revolutionizing passenger flights, standardization of parts, evolution of advertising, non-airline investments, airline safety, meteorology and weather forecasting; the closing of CAB and the struggling airline industry that followed.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke and James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include childhood activities: kick the can, track meets, varsity wrestling, acting as president of his class; social climate of the 1930s; life during the Depression; holiday celebrations: birthday, Christmas, 4th of July; American political consciousness of pre-World War II Europe; coping with mother's day and father being overseas in the Navy; moving to Minnesota; attending the University of Minnesota; paratroop training experiences; attending demolition school; encounters with the Japanese; conditions on a military transport ship; Banzai attacks; fighting in New Guinea, Leyte, and Okinawa; occupying Yokohama; returning home, getting married, and starting a family; finishing his education at the University of Minnesota; establishing Fairview as a multi-unit hospital; the revolutionary idea of a multi-unit hospital; interviewing to be the head of Johns Hopkins Medical School and declining the position; teaming with the Dayton Corporation at Southdale; establishing various affiliates; creating global hospital systems in Saudi Arabia and Cairo; role of health insurance and HMOs; development of a "Com-university" at the University of Minnesota Medical Center; meeting the King of Norway; serving as Senior Advisor to the Dean of the Medical School.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke and James E. Fogerty.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; watching the rise of the Nazis from a small farming community; entering the army along with his father and brother; serving thirty-six months in heavy combat on the Russian Front; being wounded, serving on the Western Front; becoming a prisoner of war [POW]; becoming a refugee after losing everything in Eastern Germany; immigrating to the United States and building a new life in Minnesota through education and hard work.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include living conditions in the basement of a duplex; the Catholic school experience; recreational activities: going to silent films, playing softball on competitive teams; holiday celebrations; 4th of July, birthdays, Christmas; life during the Great Depression and going on welfare; bottling homemade beer during Prohibition; working for Montgomery Wards, Northwest Airlines, and Northwest Aeronautics; life in the Marine Corps: training, playing on post sports teams; life as a part of a young, married couple; getting involved with bowling and the accomplishments that followed; employment situations and the real estate market during the 1950s and 1960s; starting a family business.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include city life in St. Paul: grocery shopping, housing conditions, clothing, radio broadcasts; holiday celebrations: birthdays, Christmas, 4th of July; childhood activities: working at a bowling alley, baseball, football, sledding; the Great Depression and the Works Progress Administration; being drafted and advanced medical training exercises; volunteering for kitchen duty; army life in England, waiting to be deployed; being apart of the D-Day invasion: duck missions, Falaise, parading in Paris; returning home on furloughs; re-enlisting in the Army Reserves and being sent to Korea; the battle of Chipyong-Ni and The May Massacre; married life in the 1950s; running a liquor store; going back to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-Day; retiring and volunteering to help children from low income families obtain an education.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up poor in Northeast Minneapolis; inter-ethnic neighborhood rivalries; school opportunities; the Civilian Conservation Corps, entering the army; serving in the 3rd Armored Division and the 2nd Ranger Battalion; the D-Day landings and combat in Northern Europe; courting and bringing home an English war bride; social and economic changes relating to postwar economic developments; the 1965 Fridley tornadoes.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in California and Minneapolis; social life; jobs and school prior to and early in World War II; how war changed friendship patterns and communities; army training and service in the infantry; the lifelong effects of participating in a concentration camp liberation; homecoming; student life; working in sales and in advertising; seeing television for the first time and then learning to use it first in advertising and later in his non-profit work; using his wartime experiences to develop a non-profit company to foster communication and resolve conflict.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include traveling to Japan at a young age; working in the rice paddies; living in Japanese society: the sense of community, abundance of food, hygiene; childhood activities: field days, swimming competitions, Ensoku, excursions; returning to the United States; cleaning/cooking at a Caucasian home for money and board; running his uncle's grocery store; being searched by the FBI; being forced to evacuate; life at an internment camp; being drafted into the army; relocating to Minneapolis for cryptanalyst training; visiting his family in Tokyo on a furlough; translating important documents for MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo; returning home; finding a job and house; returning to Japan and the difference of postwar Japan.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in a small town during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl; quality of rural education and the employment opportunities open to young men and women prior to World War II; working in the defense industry; service in World War II in a Graves Registration unit; options at home when discharged after the war; re-enlisting in the army and service in the Army of Occupation; college in the 1950s; finding employment; changes in public schools from the 1950s to the 1980s; service in the Army Reserves and changes during the Vietnam War; changes in Minneapolis and suburban development.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include parents divorcing, moving in with his grandparents; hunting and fishing on park reserves; food culture during the 1920s; fashion culture during the 1920s; personal hygiene; holiday celebrations: birthdays, Christmas, 4th of July; local entertainment: radio, movies, the circus; involvement in Boy Scouts; life during the Great Depression; joining the National Guard and training exercises; beginning work at creamery; the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940; eloping to Iowa with his wife; avoiding the draft due to his work; working at a creamery in Texas; purchasing his own creamery in Minnesota; producing milk instead of cream; expansion and transferring the creamery to South Dakota; keeping the business within the family.

Interviewed by: Douglas Bekke.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include life and growing up during the Great Depression on Minnesota's Iron Range; early schooling; service in the Air Force and experiences as a pilot in numerous missions over Europe; experiences as a Prisoner of War; postwar career.

Interviewed by: Kevin Rofidal.