DURHAM, N.C. - A new radio special from the Center for Documentary Studies and American RadioWorks captures Americans’ immediate responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and contrasts them with the voices of Americans sixty years earlier as they reacted to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. This powerful hour of radio is an illuminating look at our nation in crisis across sixty years; it reveals striking changes in American society, and the national character, over two generations.

On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan struck Pearl Harbor, the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress deployed some of his colleagues across the country to record interviews with ordinary Americans about the surprise attack and President Roosevelt’s declaration of war. The resulting twelve-hour collection, a treasure of American voices reacting to a changed world, has been housed at the American Folklife Center, largely ignored, for sixty years.

On September 12, 2001, American Folklife Center staff members saw echoes of Pearl Harbor in the terrorist attacks of the previous day. Following Lomax’s lead, the Center asked cultural fieldworkers to document, on audiotape, "the immediate reactions of average Americans in your own communities to yesterday’s attack … [and] how their lives have been changed." Folklorists, students, public librarians and others sent in five hundred hours of post-September 11 recordings.

Days of Infamy also features interviews with prominent Americans who lived through both attacks: journalists Russell Baker and Helen Thomas, historian Roger Wilkins, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, folksinger Pete Seeger, and writer Elizabeth Spencer. These thoughtful older Americans serve as the program’s narrators. Also woven through the hour is popular music from the two eras–music spawned by World War II and the War on Terror.

A 17-minute version of Days of Infamy will air on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday on August 8. The one-hour piece will air on numerous public radio stations across the country, with airtime determined by local programming.

Produced by Elana Hadler Perl of the Center for Documentary Studies and John Biewen of American RadioWorks, Days of Infamy is part of Understanding America after 9/11, the 2002 Public Radio Collaboration, supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Archival recordings are courtesy of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Additional support is provided by the Michael and Laura Brader-Araje Foundation.

Understanding America After 9/11 is a collaborative effort of public radio stations across the nation, which have created a week of locally produced programming intended to spark a coordinated national conversation on the most pressing issue of our time. From September 3 to 10, individual stations will combine these collaborative pieces with their own local programming to deliver special coverage that is national in relevance, yet tuned to their local audiences.

To download the complete media package for this special, including photographs, feed information, and promotional language, go to www.americanradioworks.org/stations/

You can also visit the Web site for Understanding America After 9/11(www.UnderstandingAmerica.org)

Major funding for American RadioWorks is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for Days of Infamy was provided by the Michael and Laura Brader-Araje Foundation.

###