Personal Accounts of World War II Are Presented in Exhibit : Reagan library: The touring display of photographs, weapons, artifacts and papers opens today.

A rich, searing new exhibit on World War II opens today at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library with the sleepy sounds of a ukulele.

Drifting from the burnished walnut grille of an old RCA radio there, this is how a Hawaiian broadcast must have sounded on the night of Dec. 6, 1941.

Then appear flickering home movies of the U.S. fleet exploding under Japanese bombs at Pearl Harbor, and the history of World War II unfolds across the gallery in an impressive display of photographs, weapons, artifacts and personal papers.

“World War II: Personal Accounts,” collected by the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library from the National Archives and a host of private lenders, is making its last stop on a national tour that closes at the Reagan library near Simi Valley on Feb. 28.

“If you’ve got no more than half an hour to see this, I guarantee you’re going to be engaged on several levels,” said Richard Norton Smith, director of the library.

There are models of battle machines, photographs of soldiers and sailors, and equipment used by those whom the war made famous.

Spotlights pick out a battered brass compass used by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s silver pince-nez. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s olive-drab jacket. Eva Braun’s photo album. War correspondent Ernie Pyle’s compact Corona typewriter.

Famous documents are on display: the declaration of war against Japan, Adolf Hitler’s last Will and Political Testament, the actual papers of surrender signed in 1945 by German and Japanese commanders.

Here is the first draft of President Roosevelt’s speech to Congress.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in world history . . . “ he began, then scratched out the last two words, penciling in the word infamy .

Here are letters from the war’s greatest commanders.

“There was one fine thing done when the tenth panzer attacked us,” Army Gen. George S. Patton wrote to his wife from the North African campaign against Rommel’s tanks. “One platoon of K Company eighteenth died to a man the last thing they were heard yelling was come on you hun bastards.”

Here are the debris of battle--a GI’s shrapnel-torn helmet plucked from the sands at Normandy, and one of the perfectly round, glossy, ocher ceramic jars used as Japanese grenades.

And here are physical mementos of conquest--a Japanese sword surrendered by the POW camp commandant at the River Kwai, a German Iron Cross medal, the wooden plug that airmen pulled to arm the atomic bomb over Nagasaki.

Throughout the gallery, loudspeakers play the national anthems of all the nations embroiled in World War II.

And lifelike plaster figures of Allied and Axis infantrymen stand frozen in the act of smoking a cigarette, draining a canteen, capturing a prisoner of war.

Most poignant of all, though, are the visions of war recorded in secret diaries and letters to the home front written by the warriors themselves.

“The larger-than-life figure is here, but mostly it’s the GI’s war,” Smith said.

“Guards using horse whips & clubs especially on Sr. officers,” wrote U.S. Army Col. Albert Svihra, recording the Bataan Death March on tissue-thin cigarette paper.

“Moved on to Balanga (129) for night’s stop. Water allowed at Pilar only . . . Filipino civilians giving away food regardless of Jap threats. . . . In compound there merciless beatings.”

Watching the carrier Lexington destroyed at the Battle of Midway, Navy fire controlman Clifford M. Dunn Jr. wrote: “It’s getting quite dark now and the flames finally reach the planes on her stern that couldn’t get off . . .

“Ammunition left in the guns along flight deck explodes and the tracers shoot up in the sky as if someone was still firing them--She is now completely covered by flames and her hull is white hot, lighting up the sky & water for miles around.”

Army Lt. Walter F. Commander wrote his wife from the Italian front: “I want to remain changeless for you, Dolly, but I can see the changes in myself even as the days pass. You get something twisted out of your insides by all of this filth & sewage. . . . Darling, hold me so close tonight. Never before have I had so much need of you.”

And there are letters from Axis soldiers showing they were just as scared and determined as their Allied counterparts.

“The Russian had built a little bridge-head. . . . In a great counter-attack we threw him back across the river and took this island where we are lying now,” wrote Kuno Schmitt, an Obergefreiter in the German army, in a letter to his sister from the front.

“There was a lot of action in the last few days and all my extra fat is gone,” he wrote. “My beautiful dress uniform looks more depressing now. One must never lose faith in God even if things look real bad.”

And there are hints of the patriotism and the will to live that propelled these men through the most wide-ranging war the world had ever seen.

In one display case lies a red scrap of cloth, all that was left of the U.S. flag that Col. Paul Delmont Bunker lowered and then burned upon the U.S. surrender at Corregidor.

Bunker sewed the swatch into his clothing. He later died of beriberi in a Japanese prison, but Cpl. Delbert Ausmus eventually got to present it to U.S. War Secretary Robert P. Patterson--as Bunker had requested.

Describing the amphibious landing at Normandy, Army Lt. Col. Alfred F. Birra wrote his wife, Barbara, “Now it’s our turn . . . The ramp is lowered and the Sgt. and I stepped off into four feet of water . . .

“We had about 500 yards of water to cross, we couldn’t run cause the water was too deep, we couldn’t crouch, we couldn’t do anything except just what we did. Wade on into shore.”

FYI

“World War II: Personal Accounts” is on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week through Feb. 28 at the Reagan library. Because they are fragile and sensitive to light, the Instruments of Surrender signed on V-E Day and V-J Day will be on display only between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. each day. Otherwise, protective lids bearing photographs of those documents are locked in place over them. Admission is $4 for adults, $2 for seniors and free for children under age 16. At the request of former President Reagan, all World War II veterans and their immediate families can enter the museum free during December.