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.
Sparky Songer, Danville
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Sparky Songer served in the infantry in Europe and was captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. He spent six months in German camps before escaping as the war was winding down and finding his way to American lines, thanks to the help of an English-speaking German guard who was a graduate of the University of Michigan. Songer talks to WILL-TV producer Denise La Grassa about his escape and his experiences in the German camps, where he subsisted almost almost entirely on rutabaga soup. He weighed under 100 pounds when he reached safety. Songer is curator and president of the Vermilion County War Museum.
RealVideo archive:
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.
Audio archives:
Play Now:RealAudio archive | downloadable MP3
Oral History Interview: Ralph Woolard of Tolono
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Ralph Wagner Woolard, veteran with the U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division 142d Regiment 3rd Battalion served from April 1943 to Oct. 5, 1945. He was in an intelligence squad and his highest rank at the end of the war was Staff Sergeant.
Woolard was in combat for the majority of his service in Europe except for recuperation from wounds (twice). He saw action in some of the bitterest battles in Italy, France, Germany and Austria (for example Monte Cassino, Selestat, on the Siegfried Line). His decorations are two Purple Hearts with oak leaf cluster, Bronze Star, and the Combat Infantry Badge.
RealVideo archive:
Audio archives:
Play Now:RealAudio archive | downloadable MP3
Merlin Taber, Champaign, and Delbert Augsburger, Flanagan
Merlin Taber of Champaign and Delbert Augsburger of Flanagan, whose churches opposed fighting, chose different paths when confronted with decisions about going to war. Taber, from a Quaker background, obtained conscientious objector status after being drafted and served in the Civilian Public Service. Augsburger, of Flanagan, comes from a Mennonite background, but he and his brothers went into the military against the teachings of their church.
Audio archives:
Play Now:RealAudio archive | downloadable MP3
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.
Audio archives:
Play Now:RealAudio archive | downloadable MP3
Setting the Record Straight about the USS Indianapolis Disaster
The sinking of the USS Indianapolis has been called the worst single at-sea loss of life in the history of the U.S. Navy. It was attacked by a Japanese submarine in July of 1945, resulting the deaths of nearly 900 men who either perished in the sinking or died in the shark-infested waters in the days that followed. Yet only in recent years have there been efforts to accurately describe the tragedy and the ordeal its 317 survivors went through. The 81 remaining survivors want to set the record straight. WILL-AM’s Jeff Bossert visits places and people who are part of the effort, including a new exhibit at the Indiana War Memorial, and a naval aviator who, as a boy, researched the sinking of the ship.
Audio archives:
Play Now:RealAudio archive | downloadable MP3
Story extras:
Jeff Bossert interviews Hunter Scott, whose research on the USS Indianapolis has cleared misconceptions about the tragedy: RealAudio archive| MP3 archive