Finally tonight, for those of us who are interested in who we are or how far our nation has come and how much we have changed in a very short time, the federal government today released a gold mine . they released the 1940 census, including what people told the census takers in their interviews about their lives, they pay, they living arrangements, and it shows we have changed so much in this relatively short period of time. in 1940 , we had survived a depregdz and fought a world war . and we had no way of knowing quite yet it would someday we called the first world war . in 1940 , it was still possible to see civil war veteran marching in your local memorial day parade, and that year, americans were told the census was mandatory.