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.
Oral History Interview: Harold Cox of Hoopeston
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Harold Cox served in the Army from April 1944 to September 1945. He fought in the Rhineland Campaigns in Europe.
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Oral History Interview: Edward Layden of Hoopeston
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Ed Layden went into the Army before World War II, but suffered an injury and was discharged before the U.S. went to war. He returned home, and worked on the family farm. Once the war started, it was very hard to find workers to help with farm work, and many farmers worried that it wouldn’t be possible to get their crops harvested before they spoiled in the fields. The program in which German POWs helped out as laborers on their farms proved to be very helpful. Layden worked with 20 German prisoners from the German POW camp in Hoopeston harvesting sweet corn. The prisoners were picked up at the canning factory in his dad’s truck and brought to his farm. They enjoyed being out in the country, where his mother would make them sandwiches, cookies and chocolate milk.
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Oral History Interview: Hale Burge of Hoopeston
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Hale Burge started his career in the Air Force (then the Army Air Force) when he was drafted into World War II as a teenager in rural Illinois. Like all inductees, he was tested in a lot of areas in order to best match his skills to the job he would be assigned. For him, that meant that he would be working on planes. Burge served in the Aleutian Island chain, frequently taking parts from a number of broken planes in order to create single plane that could be safely put back in the air. He saw terrible crashes and talks about the loss of life. Planes from these northern Pacific islands bombed Japan and other sites. America’s presence in the area prevented invasion of Alaska and gave the enemy another area to worry about and to have to spread their forces out more. Burge, a man who lived through the dark Depression years, also talks about involvement in the war as positively affecting this country.
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One American POW's Story
Curt Campbell (left, holding a copy of his memoirs) is a retired farmer—and an American serviceman who experienced prison life behind enemy lines. AM 580’s Tom Rogers talked with him.
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Hoopeston POW Camps
German POWs were brought to Hoopeston each summer to pick vegetables and work in factories canning tomatoes, asparagus and corn. WILL-AM’s Tom Rogers talks to people who remember working with the POWs. Although locals were told not to talk to the prisoners, people recall the Germans singing as they marching from their barracks to the factories each day.
Rogers also interviews Kurt Pechmann, left, who as a German POW was sent from Camp Ellis outside Peoria to Hoopeston’s POW camp for about two months to pick asparagus. Pechmann was later moved to a number of camps in Wisconsin, where he met the farmer who eventually sponsored his immigration to the U.S. in 1952.
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