Four first-hand accounts take us from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Japanese surrender. Though none of the men ever met during the war, their stories intersect in unexpected ways.

Dick Tucker and Wayne Newport both served under the same commanding officer on different ships. Wayne Newport also saw action off Iwo Jima, where B-24 navigator Harry Peterson flew most of his missions. While army medic Willis Bishop rescued troops on Okinawa, Wayne Newport battled kamikazes offshore.

This broadcast is part of 90.3 WVIK Augustana Public Radio Station’s Quad Cities Oral Histories series. It was created from the oral histories shared by local Quad Cities residents who served in the military and “homefront” efforts during World War II and the Korean War.

Now in their 70s and 80s, these local citizens were chemists on the Manhattan Project, brides from England, farm boys on “scrap drives,” MedEvac nurses, and “Rosie-the-Riveters.” They were at Pearl Harbor and survived D-Day. One man shot open the padlock on the gates of Dachau; several liberated the labor camps across Europe.

Their military service deployed them all over the world until they came “home” to the Quad Cities to teach, build businesses, practice law, style hair, continue nursing, become tradesmen, raise families and sustain our communities.

WVIK broadcasts in a 75-mile radius from studieos in Rock Island, Illinois.

You may also listen on-line at WVIK’s website.