For an Administration of Audio Visual Collections class group project, we each created descriptions for 25 images from the Virtual Motor City collection at Wayne State University. The VMC consists of digitized photographs of WWII-era Detroit. Composing the descriptive metadata required research using the Detroit News Historical and Current database and other websites. Working in groups of three, we were able to quality check each other’s work. A few of the descriptions that I wrote are shown below.

Two truckloads of troops and a soldier standing near the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The troops from Selfridge Field, under the command of Lt. Dale M. Garvey, were deployed to guard Detroit’s international border crossings. Earlier in the day that this photograph was captured, December 7, 1941, the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked. A lighted “Tunnel to Canada” sign is in the background.

A crowd gathers around a Japanese suicide submarine on a trailer behind a truck. The submarine was captured by the United States Navy off the island of Oahu, Hawaii, near Pearl Harbor, on December 8, 1941. It was on a national tour sponsored by the United States Treasury War Finance Committee and Retail Merchants Association to sell war bonds. It is parked on Bagley Avenue near Grand Circus Park in front of the United Artists Theater. A marquee on the theater reads “Judy Garland and Van Heflin in ‘Presenting Lily Mars’ and ‘Pilot No. 5’”.

Men and Women register to volunteer for the Office of Civilian Defense at Jefferson Intermediate School among signs promoting civilian defense. Elmer McDaid directs the volunteers. Similar registrations occurred at intermediate schools and high schools throughout Detroit from November 12-14, 1941. This registration occurred during Civilian Defense Week (November 11-16, 1941) during which each day focused on a different aspect of civilian defense.

Images from the Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University