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: Albert Helregel of Loda
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Albert Helregel served in the Army Artillery from March 1941 to June 1945. The No. 1 man on a gun crew of a 105 mm Howitzer, he was involved in the battles of Guadalcanal and Bougainville.
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Oral History Interview: Kermit Harden of Urbana
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Kermit Harden served in the U.S. Army infantry in Europe. He was awarded the Silver and Bronze Stars and participated in major battles in Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe. As a prisoner of the Germans, Harden was part of a famous prisoner exchange engineered by a Red Cross officer who boldly traveled into enemy territory to negotiate the swap.
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Hoopeston Residents Share Memories of Former POW Camp
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Eighty people attended a community conversation October 25, 2007 at the Hoopeston Public Library in Hoopeston, IL featuring local stories of the former POW camp in Hoopeston during WWII. Speaking were brothers Tom and Ed Layden who worked side-by-side with captured German soldiers; Carol Hicks, a historian who has researched and written on the Hoopeston POW camp; Curt Campbell, who was a POW mistreated by German soldiers; and Larry Coon, who has a child visited the German POW at the Hoopeston camp.
The event was co-sponsored by WILL AM-FM-TV and the Hoopeston Public Library. The panel and audience discussion were moderated by Tom Rogers of WILL AM-FM-TV.
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Oral History Interview: Frances Schneider of Champaign
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Frances Schneider was a civilian instructor during World War II, teaching Morse Code to enlisted men at Scott Field in Belleville, Ill. Her late husband, Jack Schneider, was a section chief in the Army Air Corps. He was the radio operator in connection with the Enola Gay on its flight to Japan.
Schneider was having fun at a skating rink when the shocking announcement of the bombing of Pearl Harbor was made over the loud speaker. She remembers vividly how life changed. Two of her brothers were already in the service. Her other brother enlisted in January after the attack. Frances talks about how her family learnedwhat her brothers (and later her husband) were doing and where they were.
Wanting to contribute something to the war effort, Schneider left her position as office manager in a mail order house in Chicago and took tests to study at a radio school in Chicago. That led to her assignment at Scott Field teaching Morse Code to men who would serve as radio operators as well as gunners on B-17s. Her memories paint a poignant picture of the times. She talks about students who left the school as boys and returned as war-weary men, of discrimination issues for blacks, and of the courage of families who faced losses and carried on. She talks about the funny, sometimes sad, human events that also occurred during the war. Her story weaves together the lives of those who served abroad with those who remained in this country.
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Oral History Interview: Charles Bruns of Champaign
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Charles Bruns served as an engineer in the 3rd Infantry Division in Africa, Sicily, Italy and other locations in Europe.
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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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