[gentle piano music]
[children chattering]
- Kern's Corners
was a one-room school,
all eight grades.
[school bell ringing] It was the small Methodist church
down the road from us, but...
the neighbors were all very nice.
We would have things going on
at the school,
and everybody would come,
and it was a nice community.
We milked cows and had horses,
and some pigs, and chickens.
[geese honking] And we had some geese, too. [chuckles]
My mother liked geese.
My great-grandparents started it,
and they're buried in the Pioneer Cemetery,
and then my grandfather took it,
and then my dad took it over.
And that's where I was born.
[birds chirping]
We always went to town.
That was a big thing.
We banked in Prairie,
and we went grocery shopping.
Drugstore was there.
My mother would sell eggs.
I do remember if there was
a little bit leftover,
I got an ice cream cone.
And that lasted me all the way home.
*
- Narrator: With the coming of World War II
in Europe and Asia,
farm families on the Sauk Prairie
would soon be called upon
to make huge sacrifices.
As Nazi air forces
continued the bombing of English cities,
President Roosevelt vowed to stay out of the war
but called for massive amounts of military aid.
[recording of Pres. Roosevelt] - The people of Europe who are defending themselves
do not ask us to do their fighting.
They ask us for the implements of war,
the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters,
which will enable them
to fight for their liberty and our security.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
For us, this is an emergency
as serious as war itself.
- Michael Goc: The announcement of the coming
of the Badger Ordnance Works
takes place on October 29, 1941.
Ten thousand five hundred acres--
most of it is on the Sauk Prairie--
is going to be taken for the--
for the new plant.
- One hundred nine landowners,
seventy four of those were farms,
twenty six were cottages and residences in Weigand's Bay,
three churches, three schools, three cemeteries,
and a town hall.
- Shirley Bass Hasheider: All the farmers around,
they got together,
and they wrote to the congressmen,
and they were trying to urge the government
to move it further north where there was more sand,
instead of taking that good land.
- President Roosevelt: December 7, 1941...
[whistling sound]
[loud explosion]
A date which will live
in infamy.
- When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,
everything changes.
- And at that point then everybody's attitude changed
180 degrees.
You know, we know-- we know it's needed.
And just give us a fair price.
- Shirley Bass Hasheider: So they came in,
and they gave my dad a dollar
to look over the land.
- As near as I can tell,
I think they got reasonably close to market value.
But market value was depression value.
So, bottom line, they got nothing.
And that hurts.
[somber music]
But you really don't know
what's going to happen
until you get that letter that you have to be off.
And that letter came
in early January,
and they had to be off by March 1st.
So basically, they had a month and a half
to clear their land-- to clear and move.
And if they're going to continue farming,
buy a new farm without money,
because none of them had been paid.
And to move hay
and their equipment
and the livestock.
In spite of
some of the bitterness,
and there is-- there is bitterness
even to the third generation--
those families should also be very proud
of what their-- what their people did.
You know, that was an impossible task,
and they did it.
[film projector reel clicking]
- Goc: The process of construction
starts in the spring of 1942.
First there's a couple thousand workers.
Summer goes on, and there's 5,000,
then there's 8,000.
By the end of August into September,
there's almost 12,000 construction workers out there.
- Verlyn Mueller: By June, this is full of buildings,
roads and buildings and railroad track.
It just went up like mushrooms.
[hammers pounding]
Everything had to be done yesterday.
So as soon as a building was ready to run,
it was running.
The principle reason for building the plant
initially was smokeless propellant,
which was used in ammunition
for everything from the 30-caliber
all the way up to propellant for the 8-inch howitzers.
[howitzer firing]
[shell clangs]
- Narrator: With thousands of workers,
the huge plant operated day and night,
and brought about big changes in Sauk Prairie.
At the edge of Prairie du Sac,
the government purchased more farmland
and built a trailer park to house hundreds of workers.
- Michael Goc: The coming of the powder plant
is bittersweet,
kind of glad and sad.
That plant ended the Depression,
what was left of it in this area,
not just here,
but maybe for a 50-mile radius,
because workers came from all over,
a lot of people who need a place to live
and a lot of people who are going to spend money.
They're going to eat dinner somewhere.
But if you're any kind of merchant
doing-- providing any kind of service in this village,
you can do pretty well.
You can do well if you're working at the plant
because the wages are multiple times
what you could make doing anything else comparable.
- Newsreel Announcer: Eighteen million women aren't enough.
As more men are called for military service,
their places must be taken by women.
- Goc: World War II is the "Great Patriotic War,"
and the powder plant really brings that war home,
obviously, literally, out the back door here.
And it gives people
who otherwise might not participate in that war
an opportunity to take part.
So, if you're a woman,
you know you're not going to hit the beach at Normandy,
but you're going to be able to provide the ammunition
for that invasion.
- WOWs were Women Ordinance Workers.
During World War II,
they had over 200,000
civilians working
in the Ordinance Department,
and of those over 80,000 were women.
Some of them were here producing propellant.
Just about all of the processes,
there were women working in there.
[gentle piano music]
- I worked in the employment office there
because I could type.
There was a row of us sitting there.
It was an interesting job,
but it was mixed feelings, that's for sure.