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An interesting excerpt from WIKIPEDIA:

Illinois in World War II

Roger D. Launius
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, D.C.

For many Illinoisans of the 1940s, World War II was a great crusade to free the world from tyrants who would dominate it for their own purposes. Some have called it the last good war, one in which moral choices were clear, and the enemy was evil. If the morality of the sides taken in the war was less obvious than residents of the state thought at the time, there is still no doubt that the forces of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the empire of Japan were clearly the aggressors and deserving of destruction. Within hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Illinois residents, like other people in the nation, were mobilizing for war.

One of the first consequences of the Pearl Harbor attack was the governor's call for volunteers tor defense and war services. As a result young men from all over the state flocked to recruiting stations to enlist in the armed forces. Thousands of young men from Illinois served on combat fronts around the globe. In addition, thousands of young men from other states were sent for training at bases in Illinois or housed there temporarily before being transported to another post. The population shifts were some of the most important aspects of change for Illinois resulting from the war. Servicemen and transient war workers, for instance, were everywhere. They were passing through the state enroute to debarkation points overseas or home on furlough, or were temporarily stationed in the state. These people pumped dollars into every community through which they passed. Those stationed in the region formed attachments to it that affected the rest of their lives. These population shifts also created housing and other urban problems that had to be dealt with throughout the 1940s.

In addition to the volunteers from Illinois who went to war, the population of the state engaged in all manner of war work throughout the period of the

conflict. The most understandable aspect of this effort was the expansion of existing and the creation of many new military facilities. Most of these were training or logistics bases. Scott Field, near St. Louis, Missouri, in the southwestern part of the state, had been established in 1917, but enjoyed a radical expansion in 1942 as a training installation for Army Air Forces radiomen. Fort Sheridan, a nineteenth-century frontier post near Chicago, gained a new lease on life as a training school for the Quartermaster Corps and other Army organizations. The Great Lakes Naval Training Station, opened in 1911, also expanded as a boot camp tor new recruits. Other installations, such as Camp Ellis, were hurriedly established in Illinois to fulfill wartime training needs. These installations created nearly 20,000 jobs in the state during World War II, and the multiplying effect of federal paychecks spent in the local economy provided a great boost to the state.

There were several unique attributes Illinois offered when siting these military installations. First, there was the issue of safety from attack, a realistic concern by the military in 1941 and 1942. The ability of the Japanese Navy to strike 6,000 miles east of their traditional sphere of operations and to cripple the American fleet in Hawaii was not an action to be dismissed without serious consideration. In such an environment, decisions to locate training and other support facilities to inland areas was a natural extension. Second, the open spaces available in Illinois made training operations there all the more attractive. Land was available for bases and ranges, air-space was not congested for aircraft activities, and Lake Michigan provided safe water for naval training. Third, Illinois was a part of a superb transportation infrastructure that could support logistics activities. Transcontinental railroads and highways were in place, and both St. Louis, just over the border on the Mississippi River, and Chicago had been an integral part of the transcontinental airway system since the early 1920s. Shipping and receiving of war material, therefore, posed little difficulty. Finally, the state of Illinois had a large number of intelligent people who were out of work and willing to be retrained tor defense activities.