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Hiltcher's butcher wagon made the rounds to farms and ranches in Placentia and Fullerton in the early days. |
Some of the more interesting stories that the center has in its archives include what life was like for Vietnamese immigrants and refugees who eventually settled in the area, and how political conservatism got a foothold in Southern California.
“What’s fascinating about many of these stories are that they are firsthand accounts by people who actually lived during these times and experienced what it was like,” said Hansen.
More recently, the center has begun publishing a new book each year based on the interviews and recordings. These published volumes have included descriptions of life inside Japanese internment camps, views of religious pluralism in Orange County, the lives of Japanese physicians at Manzanar, African-Americans in California, poetry and others. Today, as in the past, students in Cal State Fullerton’s history classes are often the interviewers, coaxing stories and anecdotes out of their subjects.
For instance, Megan Tanaka, a former graduate student and co-editor of “Behind the Orange Curtain: Religious Pluralism in a Southern California County,” took on the project as a graduate assistant in Hansen’s historical writing course.
“In the class, we frequently discussed ethnicity and religion, so we decided to focus on that,” she explained. “The students were instructed to interview someone of a different faith tradition and then share the information that they found.”
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