Sound Recordings Collection:
Speeches and Remarks of Harry S. Truman
Dates: 1934-1968
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Recordings List
Part 1. County Judge Period
Part 2. Senatorial Period
Part 3. Vice Presidential Period
Part 4. Presidential Period
Part 5. Post-Presidential Period
Part 6. Oval Office Sound Recordings
Part 7. Recordings of Interviews for Proposed History
of the United States
PART 6. OVAL OFFICE SOUND RECORDINGS
In addition to recordings of President Truman's speeches and press conferences,
the Truman Library has a small collection of recordings that were made
between 1945 and 1948 in the President's Oval Office in the West Wing
of the White House. While some of these recordings are entirely unintelligible
and the remainder include long stretches when nothing can be heard except
for background noise and/or static, a number of them do contain recordings
of President Truman talking to visitors and White House staff members
or engaged in telephone conversations, as well as recordings of the voices
of workmen on various tasks in the Oval Office. The conversations in most
instances are garbled with only occasional words and phrases being understandable,
although Mr. Truman's voice is generally recognizable. An exception is
a recording of the President's press conference of May 23, 1945, in which
every word is audible.
All of the recordings listed below were recorded by the US Army Singal
Corps.
Contact the Library for
additional information concerning the history and provenance of the Oval
Office sound recordings.
PART 7. RECORDINGS OF INTERVIEWS FOR A PROPOSED
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
After the publication of his Memoirs in the 1955 and 1956, and
of Mr. Citizen, an account of his retirement years, in 1960, former
President Harry S. Truman, as his next writing project, began work on
a long-planned history of the United States intended primarily for the
use of high school and junior college students. The Presidents plan was
to review the history of the country through an examination of the careers
of its first 32 Presidents and of the highlights of their administrations.
Assisting the President in this task were William Hillman and David M.
Noyes. Hillman, a veteran writer and radio news correspondent, and the
author of Mr. President, a semi-biographical account of President
Truman's career, had assisted President Truman in the preparation of his
Memoirs. Noyes, a retired advertising executive, had been an unofficial
advisor to President Truman during his White House years and served occasionally
in the same capacity after President Truman's departure from office.
In preparation for writing the proposed history, Hillman and Noyes conducted
interviews with Truman on 27 days from June 29, 1960 to February 2, 1961,
questioning the former President concerning various aspects of United
States history and asking his views on each Presidential administration.
These interviews were recorded on Dictaphone belts, 139 in all, and the
recordings were subsequently transcribed by a member of the President's
staff. Shortly after this, in May 1962, Hillman, who was Mr. Truman's
principal assistant on the project, died and work on the book ceased.
After President Truman's death in 1972 both the Dictaphone recordings
and the transcripts became the property of the Federal Government in accordance
with the provisions of Truman's will. To facilitate the use of the interviews
by scholars, the Dictaphone tapes with the exception of the recording
of the June 29, 1960 interview which had been lost, were rerecorded on
cassettes. Both the cassettes and the transcripts of the interviews are
now available at the Library for the use of researchers. Contact
the Library for more information.
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