The new America’s Heroes Channel debuted on March 3^rd, 2014. The channel will highlight all war efforts of the true American heroes.

On Monday, March 10^th, 2014, the channel will be airing a new series entitled, “Against the Odds.”

The series will included a special episode, “The Marines at Hue,” that will feature moving images from the Vietnam Center and Archive.

Narrated by Rob Low, the series Against the Odds unveils the harsh realities of war. The episode will included archival footage and first-hand interviews to illuminate U.S. troops who banded together during battle.

The episode with focus on three U.S. Marines battalions that, along with two Army battalions and South Vietnamese troops, beat the odds to defeat entrenched North Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong in the South Vietnamese city in 1968.

For more details, click on any of these links.

www.43Films.com

http://www.ahctv.com/tv-shows/against-the-odds/against-the-odds-video/against-the-odds.htm  

http://press.discovery.com/us/ahc/programs/against-odds/ 

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/24/military-channel-becomes-american-heroes-channel-will-focus-on-heroes-from-all/

Today the U. S. Marine Corps turns 237, and the Vietnam Center and Archive wants to wish the Marine Corps and all U. S. Marines a very happy birthday!  To celebrate we have created a small exhibit of Marine related materials.  To view the exhibit, please click on the link below.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/marines/marines12.htm

Today is the Navy’s 237th birthday, and the Vietnam Center and Archive wants to wish the Navy and all Navy personnel a very happy birthday.  We have prepared a small exhibit of Navy materials from our collection to commemorate the occasion.  Please click on the link below.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/navy/navy12.htm

Today the Air Force turns 65!  The Vietnam Center and Archive wants to wish the Air Force and all of its service men and women a very happy birthday.  To commemorate this event, we have created a small of exhibit of our Air Force related materials.  You can view the exhibit by clicking on the link below.

On August 4, 1790 the U. S. Congress authorized the construction of ten vessels to provide a new military branch for the country, the Revenue Cutter Service.  This service enforced tariff and trade laws, prevented smuggling and ensured the collection of federal revenue from ships and marine trade.  Over its life time the Revenue Cutter Service took on new duties: protecting the nation’s shore line, search and rescue and maintaining all of the country’s light houses.  In 1915 they changed their name to the U. S. Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard not only protects our nation’s shores it also serves under the Department of the Navy in all of our armed conflicts.  Today the Coast Guard turns 222 and we have gathered a few Coast Guard related items from our collection to commemorate the occasion.  To all the men and women of the Coast Guard, thank you for your service and Happy Birthday!

Today is the Army’s 237th birthday.  So happy birthday to the US Army and all the men and women who have served and are currently serving in the Army. 

We have created a small exhibit featuring Army materials from our collection to celebrate.  To view the exhibit click on the link below.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/army/

As part of their American History TV Oral Histories series, C-SPAN3 will be airing a number of interviews conducted and filmed at the Pleiku-Ia Drang Veterans 40th Anniversary Commemoration held in Washington, DC, in November 2005.  The first interview in the series to be aired will be Part One of the interview with Lt. General Hal Moore, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment during the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965, and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once…And Young.

The interview will air on C-SPAN3 at 8am (ET) on Saturday, March 3rd, and again at 3pm (ET) on Sunday, March 4th, as well as at 4am (ET) on Monday, March 5th.  Part Two of the General Hal More interview will air the following weekend at 9am (ET) on Saturday, March 10th.  More interviews from the Commemoration will air over the next few months.  For a complete schedule see http://www.c-span.org/history/.  The interviews will also be available on the C-Span American History TV website after they air.

The Vietnam Center and Archive has received a three year, $144,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to digitize the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) files of the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association Collection (FVPPA).  This collection of approximately 250,000 pages is comprised of the records of more than 10,000 Vietnamese applying to immigrate to the United States following the end of the Vietnam War.  Many of the applicants were former re-education camp detainees.

The FVPPA collection, brought to the Archive in 2005 by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation, is one of the largest and most significant collections available to researchers studying the Vietnamese American immigration experience.  The ODP files, according to Associate Director Mary Saffell are  “as important to the study of Vietnamese Americans as the Ellis Island records are to the families of immigrants from the early 20th century.”

It is expected that digitization, which will begin in February, will take three years to complete.  As the items are digitized, they will be added to the Virtual Vietnam Archive.  You can also follow the progress of the project and see recently digitized files from the collection at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vahp/digitization.php.

This is the second grant the Center has received from the NHPRC for this collection, including funding received in 2008 to originally process the collection.

Today is the U.S. Marines 236th Birthday and the staff of the Vietnam Center and Archive wish to say Happy Birthday and thank you Marines for your service.  We have created a small exhibit of Marine items from our collection to celebrate this day.  To see the exhibit, click on the link below.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/marines/marines11.htm

The first item added to the Virtual Vietnam Archive in 2001, a photograph from the Douglas Pike Collection of a factory under construction in the Bien Hoa Industrial complex northeast of Saigon

The Virtual Vietnam Archive has celebrated a number of milestones this fall, including the addition of our 500,000 item this week.  The Virtual Archive became available to researchers ten years ago this month with just a few thousand items, mostly photographs and documents.  Now the online archive contains over 3.3 million pages of material, including 330,000 documents, 130,000 images, 900 oral history interviews, and thousands of moving images, audio recordings, maps, and more.  In that ten year period, the Virtual Archive has been searched over 10,000,000 times and more than 3 million items have been downloaded.  The 500,000 item, a newspaper article titled “Faint Hope for US Airmen Still Missing in Indochina” from the Garnett Bell Collection, was digitized by student assistant Brooke Boysaw.

Reaching half-a-million items in our digital collections is a great accomplishment for our project that couldn’t have been completed without the over 100 full time staff and part time student employees who have worked on this project since 2001.  Without all of their great contributions, this project would not be the success it has been.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive project continues to digitize new materials, adding about 15,000 new pages each month from a variety of collections, including still images, individual donor’s collections, the CDEC Collection and, starting this month, the Cong Bao.  We look forward to continuing this project for years to come.