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: 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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Decatur Veteran's Diary Details Three Momentous Days
Ralph Rinehart, a skipper of small craft such as tugboats and landing craft during World War II, kept a diary. Here, in an excerpt, he describes hearing about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Had Japan not surrendered, Rinehart was to have been in the fifth wave of the invasion of Tokyo planned for October, 1945.
8/12/1945 In the Philippines
At 10 p.m., Nick Pucci, who had spent the evening downtown, returned to our tug with the news that an entire city (Nagasaki) had been destroyed by a single bomb. We assured Nick, who was highly excited, that he must have got some bad whiskey. However, a boat next to ours confirmed via their radio that the news was indeed true. Thus began the three most momentous days of my life.
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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