Shrivenham American University

Extracts from Shrivenham Post magazine, closing of US Army University, Sunday Tmes 1945 article "US Troops called Home. Shrivenham Post front page * August 1945. Copy of headed notepaper. 

The American University was created on 1st August 1945 and closed on 31st December the same year. It's activities were cut short mainly by the capitualtion of Japan in the Second World War, after two atomic bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities with devestating effects.

Please see Listing No N1196 for information on the Shrivenham Song, written specifically for the American University. Also for the digital transcription of two acetate discs that were discovered in a basement in the USA. They were recorded by American Forces Network, Shrivenham University Workshop.

Our thanks to Jack Hill from San Diego in California, USA, for sending us photos belonging to his parents who were both at Shrivenham in 1943/5. They met on Camp and were married on Camp. We have included two of their photos in this listing, they are John W. Hill and Marjorie Frances Bracy, both now deceased. To see the rest of their collection please go HERE.

We are grateful to Kim Kaufman of Vermont USA, who kindly sent us some letter extracts from her father's letters that he sent home in 1944/5. To read the extracts from Melvyn Kaufman's letters please go HERE

We are grateful to Cherielyn Ferguson for her transcription precis of her father's letters, Capt. Norman O. Gunderson, to his wife Bonne Jeane (nee Davis) in 1945. Norman was a student at the SAU during the few months that it operated. To see the letters and photos please go HERE

Should any more readers in the USA have similar material of parents who attended the SAU, please contact us. We are slowly building up a picture of what life was like there - important history ...

SAU

John & Marjorie Hill Collection 

Melvyn Kaufman letter extracts

Norman O. Gunderson letters & photos