PEORIA :
A TEEN LOOKS AT WW 11
NORMAN V. KELLY
Way back in 1945 I
was thirteen and the City of Peoria , Illinois was one hundred
years old. I’m not going to pretend that we kids were big thinkers, or walked
around with the weight of the war on our shoulders…but we were scared. First
the terrifying attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and then the disappearance of
our young Peoria
men, including my three brothers. Just over 23,000 Peorians went off to the
war, 626 of them never came back alive.
As a kid all we really knew
about the war we heard from our parents, especially our dads. I remember my mom gathering us around the
kitchen table as she read my brothers’ letters. At first folks with sons in the
war proudly hung up Service Flags in the windows with blue stars on them, sadly
some of the blue stars turned to gold. I think the scariest years were 1942 and
early 1943 when the war news was nothing short of grim. To me it was the war films that changed our
fear into pride and by the time 1945 came around, most of us were more than
ready to join up ourselves. Every cent we could scrape together was spent at
the theaters in Downtown Peoria . Today, I suppose the films would be called
propaganda movies, but what did we care?
We had John Wayne and the Army and the Navy, and our favorites, the Marines. Now how could we lose the war? We fought our own wars down in the woods near
El Vista, playing commandoes and arguing over who was going to be the officer
in charge. Since my brother sent his lieutenant bars to me you know who was in
charge…me.
The
excitement of seeing that huge picture in the local newspapers of our flag
being raised on Iwo Jima in March of ‘45 was
probably the most inspiring moment of the war.
We ran around asking for copies of that newspaper, but no one wanted to
part with it. I imagine every Peoria household cut that
picture out and framed it.
After
that victory I don’t remember seeing a fearful face among the folks that I saw
daily. Funny, but I do not have a
personal memory of May 8, 1945, which was V-E Day. It had to be amazing but I can tell you an
awful lot about V-J Day, August 14, 1945. Most of our population was downtown
and the excitement was overwhelming. I kissed my first ‘woman’ that wonderful
day and I’ll never forget her. She was sitting on a bench within the courthouse
square and at age 13, because of what I had learned from John Wayne, I walked
right up and kissed her on the lips. We loved that wartime period and the
feeling of pride it gave us just being Americans.
Editor’s
note: Norm is the author of eight books on the bawdy, wide-open history
of Peoria ,
Illinois and welcomes your
comments. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
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