It started out as just another day. But Aug. 14, 1945, turned out to be a day of extraordinary fervor and elation, the likes of which Chicago had never seen.
As Americans received word that Japan had surrendered to the Allies, surging crowds pushed their way into the Loop. Traffic came to a standstill; streetcars had to be rerouted. Work ceased in offices and factories. From almost every building in the Loop, a blizzard of wastepaper, ticker tape, confetti and torn-up phone books swept down into the streets.
And the noise began to build. From the North Shore to the Indiana line and beyond, car horns blared, church bells pealed and factory whistles blew. Guns and fireworks went off. And not even Chicago’s air raid sirens could drown out the shouts that erupted through the city. People danced in the streets, sat on each other’s shoulders, threw their hats into the air and hugged and kissed strangers.
World War II had finally come to an end.
V-J Day, officially observed on Sept. 2–when the Japanese signed the formal surrender document aboard the USS Missouri–takes on special significance this year as we mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. You many not want to “get wild” in the Loop as Chicagoans did when they first learned of Japan’s surrender, but there’s still plenty to see and do.
Here are a few local World War II-related exhibits and memorials to help you commemorate the momentous events of half a century ago.
Das Boot: An old favorite is the U-505 German submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive. Built in 1940, the 1,120-ton vessel is the only German sub from the war on American soil.
The ship was captured by the U.S. Navy on June 4, 1944, off Cape Blanco, French West Africa.
The U-505 began its last voyage on May 14, 1954, when it was towed 3,000 miles by way of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. In June of that year, the sub reached Chicago, where it was removed from Lake Michigan and transported 800 feet to its present site on the east end of the museum building.
To board the submarine, go downstairs to the museum’s lower level. On the way to the sub, you’ll pass through a “Life at Sea” display, where you can see actual World War II torpedoes. A series of photographs shows what life was like on the U-505–according to one German sailor, “it was like crawling through the neck of a bottle.” A television monitor shows footage of the sub’s capture.
Atomic experiment: A few blocks west of the museum on Ellis Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets on the campus of the University of Chicago stands “Nuclear Energy,” a 12-foot bronze sculpture by British artist Henry Moore. The work, which commemorates the first splitting of the atom on Dec. 2, 1942, marks the spot where Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and other scientists on the Manhattan Project team devised the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the now-demolished stands of the university’s football field.
Moments before the experiment, a group of men called the “suicide squad” was on hand to terminate the reaction if anything went wrong. Chicago survived the experiment, which eventually led to the making of the atom bomb. Soon after the U.S. dropped two A-bombs on Japan in August 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies, thus ending World War II.
Holocaust remembered: Head north and stop off at the Zell Holocaust Memorial at the Spertus Museum, 618 S. Michigan Ave. It’s the first permanent exhibit in an American museum to document the Holocaust. Originally established in 1975 and renovated in 1993, the memorial traces the rise of Nazism and the systematic destruction of European Jews during the 1930s and ’40s.
As you enter the exhibit, the names of Jewish Holocaust victims who were related to Chicago-area families can be read on a computer screen. On a nearby wall is a list of towns and cities throughout Europe, where millions of Jews fell prey to Nazi violence. Another wall lists the names of Nazi concentration camps.
The exhibit displays a year-by-year time line of the Holocaust from 1933, when Hitler took control of Germany, to 1945, when Allied troops liberated the camps. Artifacts taken from Auschwitz are on display and include a concentration camp uniform, an inmate’s bowl and spoon, prison shoes, a tooth extractor, a hair clipper and dentures.
Various Nazi insignia, patches and armbands are also on display, along with a German SS helmet and a canister of the Zyklon B gas used to kill Jews and other prisoners in the death camps. A monitor shows excerpts from the film “The Ambulance,” a dramatization of life in a concentration camp.
Also at the museum through Sept. 30 is the exhibit “Gls Remember: World War II and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps.” Through photos, letters, newspapers, diaries, military artifacts and firsthand accounts, Chicago Jewish World War II veterans recall the end of World War II. For more information, call 312-322-1747.
Secret tower: Most people probably don’t know that Loyola University’s Lewis Towers, 820 N. Michigan Ave., played an important part in the war. Who’d guess that this 17-story building near the Water Tower along the Magnificent Mile once housed a top-secret anti-spy school?
In a story dated Oct. 27, 1946, the Tribune told how the U.S. Army trained counterspies on the top floors of the then-Tower Court Building, a private office building. Every five weeks, about 200 Gls in civilian garb arrived from various parts of the country to learn fingerprint detection, German and Japanese ideologies, scientific crime detection, surveillance, marksmanship and photography.
Eventually sent all over the world, these Gls captured hundreds of Japanese and German agents.
Pier pilots: With all the hoopla surrounding the new Navy Pier this summer, it’s easy to forget the facility was a naval training center during World War II. More than 60,000 recruits from a half-dozen nations received some of their pilot training here before going overseas. Trainees landed on aircraft carriers out in Lake Michigan–or tried to. Haste and inexperience contributed to many crashes, and as many as 200 World War II planes still rest at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
A small photo exhibit at Navy Pier’s information center–midway down its length–traces the history of the pier and describes its role during the war. The pier is just north of the Chicago River on the lakefront at 600 E. Grand Ave. For more information, call 312-595-PIER.
Flying high: O’Hare International Airport is another Chicago site connected to World War II.
One of several plants that sprang up during the war was the now-defunct Douglas Aircraft Corp. in an area bounded by Mannheim and Higgins Roads and Devon Avenue, where part of O’Hare is located.
In 1945, the City of Chicago began to look for an appropriate location to build a new airport. The city decided to build on a site called Douglas Airport, or Orchard Field, the same site where Douglas Corp. had manufactured its aircraft. (To this day, the letters ORD still remain on airline tickets and baggage stubs as an abbreviation for “Orchard” and as a reminder to travelers of O’Hare’s modest beginnings.)
In 1949, Douglas Airport was renamed after the World War II naval hero Lt. Cmdr. Edward “Butch” O’Hare. (That same year the name of Municipal Airport on the Southwest Side was changed to Midway Airport to commemorate the Battle of Midway.)
Various displays honoring the namesake of what is now O’Hare International Airport can be viewed on the premises.
In Terminal 3 across from the security checkpoint is a replica of “Butch” O’Hare’s Congressional Medal of Honor, which he received in 1942 for shooting down five Japanese aircraft in a single engagement in defense of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.
On Nov. 26, 1943, O’Hare volunteered to lead his squadron on a daring mission to conduct the first Navy nighttime fighter attack from an aircraft carrier. He was lost and presumed killed when his plane went down in the vicinity of Tarawa Atoll. The U.S. Navy recognized his bravery in that action with the Navy Cross.
In Terminal 2 across from the security checkpoint, you can see several plaques about the naval hero. If you go to Terminal 1 across from United Airlines Customer Service Center, you can view a large photo of O’Hare. Next to the photo are President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words about O’Hare’s famous flight: “As a result of his gallant action, one of the most daring, if not the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation, he undoubtedly saved his carrier from serious damage.”
Big Red One: The 1st Division Museum at the Cantigny estate, 1S151 Winfield Rd., near Wheaton, tells the story of the U.S. Army’s 1st Division from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, and much of the exhibit focuses on World War II.
Six tanks, including two from World War II, stand in front of the museum. Inside the building, push-button, multimedia exhibits, dioramas and photographs bring World War II to life. There’s a display that shows how fascism gripped Europe and Asia from the middle 1930s until war’s end.
From a 1940s radio in a replica army barracks, you can hear a recording of President Roosevelt’s famous “Day of Infamy” speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Continue to the North Africa section and learn about the brilliant German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, and Operation Husky, the American assault on Sicily in 1943.
You can watch a video about the D-day invasion, then enter a replica of part of Omaha Beach one day after the landing. Then exit the beach through a German bunker, learn about life as a German soldier.
In the museum, you can also view the “Art Goes to War” exhibit through Nov. 26. More than 60 posters, paintings and sculptures created during wartime, including World War II, are on display.
Call 708-668-5185 for more information.
Lidice lives: In the early part of this century, a large contingent of Czech immigrants settled in and around the small town of Crest Hill, near Joliet. At one time Crest Hill was called Lidice, after the town in Czechoslovakia, and now there’s a monument to Lidice that recalls the terrible Nazi massacre that occurred there on June 10, 1942. That summer Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking SS officer, was assassinated in occupied Prague by Czech agents. In retaliation, Hitler ordered that the nearby town of Lidice be leveled and all its inhabitants killed or sent to concentration camps.
The semicircular monument, sponsored by the old Chicago Sun newspaper and dedicated on July 12, 1942, stands on a concrete platform in a grassy area in a residential neighborhood. Engraved on the face of the monument are the words: “Lidice, Czechoslovakia, destroyed by barbarism but living forever in the hearts of all who love freedom.” At the foot of the monument are the words: “Lidice lives.”
The Czechoslovak-American Congress still holds a special memorial service at the monument each year in mid-June to remember Lidice’s dead.
