Stories by Media
Stories by Location
The War, Ken Burns’ seven-part documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, was the most-watched PBS series of the past 10 years. It explored the history and horror of the Second World War from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who become caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history.
WILL-TV’s Central Illinois World War II Stories was developed in conjunction with the Ken Burns’ series.
Visit The War web site on PBS.org
Share Your Story
PBS is gathering WWII stories from viewers across the United States. Upload your story to PBS for sharing with all other viewers. If you need assistance, contact Mary Barrineau or Jack Brighton at 217-333-1070.
This project supported in part by:
Clark Lindsey Village
Ecowater Systems
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers #601
Strawberry Fields
Steamatic
WETA
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
WILL Stories
In stories on WILL radio, television and the Web, WILL looks at the war from many perspectives: men in battle on land and at sea, Japanese-American families in internment camps, conscientious objectors, women in the service, African-Americans at Chanute Air Force Base, German POWs in Hoopeston.
Web Stories
These stories and features are produced for the web only. Diary entries, oral histories, and other extended content too lengthy for broadcast will be published here.
Oral History Interview: Robert Green of Champaign
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Robert E. Green signed up for the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipman School in June of 1940, the same month he turned 21, and graduated as Ensign, USNR a year later. During the war, he served in the Navy in the Pacific, except for six months during 1943 when he returned stateside to pick up a new ship in New York. In the North Pacific, he served at Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands in 1943. In the South Pacific he took part in the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942 and the Battle of Tarawa in 1943. He earned a Silver Star for his service at Tarawa, and earned four battle stars for his service on his first ship, an APA (attack transport). During the final two years of the war, he was first lieutenant of a floating drydock at Manus Island in the Bismarck Sea, where ships were quickly repaired so that they could return to action.
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Oral History Interview: Linda Weber of Savoy
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During World War II, Linda Weber went to Purdue University to train to be an employee in the drafting department of an aircraft manufacturer producing war planes. The company needed replacements for the men who had left to fight in the war.
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Oral History Interview: Robert Whitson of Champaign
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Robert Whitson served in the U.S. Navy, participating in the invasion of Sicily and the Normandy invasion. His worst day was Christmas Day, 1943, in the North Atlantic when he didn’t know if his ship would stay in one piece the next time a wave came. He served on board a cruiser and then a destroyer. He left farming to join the Navy, and went back to farming after he came home.
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Oral History Interview: Robert Wahlfeldt of Urbana
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Robert Wahlfeldt enlisted in the U.S. Navy in July 1943 and served until May 1946. He served in the South Pacific, China Sea and Tokyo, fighting at Iwo Jima, and in the Okinawa campaign while stationed aboard the destroyer the USS Waldron.
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Oral History Interview: Margaret Henderson of Urbana
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Margaret Henderson was a senior at Radcliffe when the U.S. Navy became so desperate for communications officers that it recruited several senior girls to train to become cryptologists. German U-boats were disrupting shipping to a great degree so the Navy needed help. Henderson trained for 30 days at Mt. Holyoke and then went to Washington, D.C. where she worked from 1943-45 in Naval Communications Intelligence for the European theater. In her office, Allies read communications in which German U-boat officers were wiring each other their positions, unaware that the Allies had broken their code. One of Henderson’s jobs was to keep track of the U-boats using a big map and pins.
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Oral History Interview: Bob Spitze of Urbana
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Bob Spitze joined the Navy at age 21 after going through ROTC training in college. Soon after going through the Navy training program, he came back home and got married, only to then be shipped off to war. He was aboard an LST, which was a transport ship that often carried military vehicles like tanks and jeeps, or military personnel. Many of these ships were manufactured in Seneca, Ill., where the crews and officers would get aboard and travel down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, out to the ocean. This is exactly what Spitze did.
While in the Pacific, he participated in the occupation of both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two small Japanese islands. At Iwo Jima, Spitze says, he was witness to the great tragedy of the battle, and the final American victory when soldiers raised the American flag. For Spitze, World War II brought attention to the fact that we live in a global community. Now an economics professor at the U of I, he recognizes that the war was a result of certain global and national economic systems that allowed greed and the hunger for power to take hold of both economic markets and governments. But Spitze believes that we can ultimately recognize the importance of our global community and live at peace with one another. He and his wife have been educators ever since World War II, participating in educational efforts, not only in the U.S., but also in European countries during the reconstruction phase that followed the devastation brought about by the war.
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