If you’ve never heard of the Ramitelli Airfield, now’s the time to learn.
The airfield is located in Italy, served as the home base for the famous Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, and is one of the focuses of a new documentary from the World War II Foundation.
“The Tuskegee Airmen: Return to Ramitelli” screened at the Atlanta History Center on April 25. The documentary features interviews with World War II veterans who made up the group of Black military pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, and zeroes in on their experiences abroad as well as the racism they experienced at home.
The film was shot on location in Ramitelli, and includes numerous perspectives on the contributions of the Tuskegee Airmen, including that of a Syracuse University student and a lawyer named Colette Holt, whose father trained as a Tuskegee Airmen.
The documentary is expected to start airing on Georgia public television this month and will be available on the World War II Foundation’s website after June 1, according to an Atlanta History Center spokesperson.
Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with filmmaker and World War II Foundation Founder and President Tim Gray about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you first decide to make a documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen?
Tim Gray: We’ve been wanting to do something on that story for a while. It just comes down to the logistics. Usually, we’re working on two or three or four films at a time, and it came down to logistics of trying to put together a trip over to Italy to visit their old base and other elements of the story. It kind of all came together where we had the opportunity to go over to Italy and shoot a couple of films – one on the Tuskegee Airmen and one on Bob Dole.
Any time we sit down and do a documentary film, we try to think of ways that it hasn’t been done before. We’ve seen a lot of great films on the Tuskegee Airmen that involve more archival footage and interviews with the men. So we decided, why not go back to the base in Italy where they flew from to give people a perspective of what it looks like today and what it looked like then? And also how the Italian people who lived in the area felt about the Tuskegee Airmen and how they interacted with them. We wanted the film to be something totally different than had already been done, so going to Italy and going to Ramitelli, and doing all this filming in the area where they flew from really made the film something unique that hadn’t been done before.
What prompted the focus on Ramitelli? Was it difficult trying to coordinate getting over there?
Gray: No, it was just we’ve been so busy with films in Europe and the Pacific, it took us sitting down and focusing on this … This is a film that we feel is important. We also did a film last year on women involved in World War II. We do a lot of focus on the personal stories of the war, but we had not done anything on just women in World War II, and we had not done anything on just African American involvement in World War II. So last year was kind of our chance to do both.
We try to cover as many elements of the war as possible and as many groups who were involved in the war, whether that be people caught up in concentration camps in the Holocaust, or people caught up in the Battle of Britain who witnessed the attack on England by the Germans, or people who live on Pacific islands that are littered still today with the debris of World War II. We try to capture the different elements of the war that happened then and still are important and still visible today.
Going back to Ramitelli was important, to get that perspective of giving people a chance to view what was left of their base from 1944 and 1945, and people in the village who were young kids at that time who remember these men, and how the Italians felt about having African Americans there. What was interesting is they didn’t look at them as African Americans, they looked at them as Americans. They did not look at their skin color. So while African Americans were being treated so poorly at home, here’s this place in Italy that didn’t look at skin color. They just looked at them as liberators and Americans, and that’s kind of really how it should be.
Something that struck me about the documentary was seeing just how much these places in Italy were affected and how it looks like they haven’t been touched in years. I feel like in school, we focused on the German and Japanese side of the war, but not really the war in Italy. What was it like to be on the ground there and see how frozen in time those places seemed?
Gray: The war in Italy is largely a forgotten war, because it was a war that was not glamorous. It was a slog, really – it was going up one mountain and across a valley, and going up to another mountain. It was rainy, it was muddy, there was nothing. And there was no end to it. The war in Italy was fought right up until the last day of World War II, and it was still going on even when the Germans surrendered. It had a beginning, but it didn’t have an end.
Italy is a country with centuries of history. So to see that World War II history mixed in with the Roman history – and that these soldiers passed these Roman ruins while they were fighting, connecting one part of history with another part of history, and both those parts of history still remain – was really interesting, to kind of visualize what those men saw that’s still there. Rome, and the Colosseum, and Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii, these were all still obviously there in 1944, and 1943, and 1945. So you’re looking at what these men looked at, and they’re looking at Roman history as they’re fighting World War II. Some villages are still there that were damaged during the war, and they left them as is. There were small villages that were completely bombed out that are left bombed out as a testament to what happened there in World War II. So the mixing of history, I think, was fascinating for us to see.
To be on the ground and witness what Ramitelli looks like today – which is almost totally different than what it looked like during the war except for this one building – it was really about what this one building, which is falling apart, represented. When you look at this building, and we tried to combine some animation of what it looked like back then in the film but this building, falling apart in the middle of this huge field, represents really a movement – a civil rights movement. I think everybody who was on the trip with us looked at this building as the beginning of something.
Colette Holt, who’s father trained as a Tuskegee Airmen, and a college student went with the crew on that trip. How was that set up?
Gray: We work separately with Syracuse University to bring some college students with us. We do a tour every year where we go out and shoot a documentary film with college students to introduce them to filmmaking, introduce them to World War II culture, introduce them to just culture from overseas. This year, we’re partnering with Syracuse, and also we have five UGA students going with us. We’re partnering with the Grady School at [the University of Georgia], so it’s really grown.
It’s a way to introduce these students to different aspects of culture. A lot of them have never been out of the United States. It just happened to be, one of the students from Syracuse was African American, and he really was able to touch his heroes and look at this as something more than just an old building. He looked at it as inspiration for him to overcome adversity in his own life.
We invited Colette along knowing that her dad was a Tuskegee Airmen, and what that journey would be like for her would be important to the overall film.
Everyone who spoke before the documentary screened at the Atlanta History Center really put an emphasis on this film focusing more on the personal stories rather than being a purely historical text. Why did you want to make that distinction?
Gray: None of our films are about the strategy of the war. None of our films are 30,000-foot views of World War II. All of our films are about personal stories from the war. We always like to say we like to tell the stories from the 5,000-foot view, which are the personal stories of the men and the women and the survivors who were caught up in the war, because those are the stories that resonate with the younger generation. Younger generations seem to tune out when you start talking the strategy of the war, and what tanks were better than other tanks. You lose them. What they want to hear are personal stories about people their own age who overcame incredible odds, or overcame this incredible adversity, or had this inner courage and strength to be able to fight and win a World War.
We always say when we have high school kids in our museum in Rhode Island, or college kids, that it was your age group that won World War II. I don’t think they understand that. I don’t think they understand that it was 19, and 20, and 21 and 22 year olds who saved the world. When you explain that to them, they’re always like oh my god – I can’t believe somebody my age had the courage and strength to leave home – to go to Europe, to go to the Pacific, to go to the far East – and do these things. It’s an inspirational thing for them that opens their eyes. If that generation could do it, our generation can make a difference as well.
That’s how we reinforce our stories. It’s all about an 18 year old, or 19 year old or a 20 year old. In one case, we did a film on a 14 year old who fought in World War II. When we have high school kids in here, we have a 14 year old in here, we tell them about the story and they can’t believe that a 14 year old went off and lied about his age and fought in World War II.
It’s so unlike what’s going on today … Everyone is so focused on their phones and everyone’s so focused on reality television and all these things. That generation was totally anti that. They went overseas, they won a World War as a teenager or young person, and they came home and they didn’t want any accolades. They didn’t want to be called heroes. They didn’t want any glory. They didn’t talk about it. It’s so opposite how today’s generation is, which is more, you know – look at me, and look how great I am. We try to get this message across to the kids that you can accomplish great things, and you can become great people , but you don’t have to go around telling everybody how great you are. Get through your life, accomplish your goals – but you don’t need to base your life on views or likes. There’s so much pressure on young people today when they post something to get likes and views on their stories, and that’s not how that generation was. I think, without getting too pious here, that generation left us a blueprint on how to be better people, and how to accomplish great things without basing those great things on how many people told you how great you are.
Well, they didn’t have the opportunity. They didn’t have social media, or all that at their fingertips.
Gray: They didn’t, they didn’t. They came home and if you called them a hero, they would say all the heroes are buried in the cemeteries overseas. I was just doing a job. It’s hard for kids to relate to that today.
In the film, you talk to a lot of Tuskegee Airmen. Were you able to be in the room for those interviews?
Gray: Some of them. And then some of them we had from other sources. There are not many of those Tuskegee Airmen left. Harry Stewart, who we interviewed in the film, is one of three living Tuskegee pilots. Most of them in the film, I think probably 95% of them, have passed away since.
How was the interview experience for you, for the men you were able to talk to?
Gray: It’s incredible because of what they went through – what was going on at home here in the United States where there was racism, there was rampant racism. They were treated as second class citizens here in the United States. I mean, the base at Ramitelli was segregated. They were going through all these things at home and their families were going through all these things at home, where they had to prove themselves much more than an average white flier would have to prove themselves. One of the guys talked about – I’d never felt more free in my entire life than I would when I was in a P-51 airplane at 20,000 feet and protecting those bombers, because up there we weren’t of a color. We were just Americans.
The bomber pilots didn’t know they were Black, they just knew they were great pilots. I think that’s how we should approach life. It’s not the color of your skin or how you look, it’s how you handle a situation and how you go about your job. It got to the point where these bomber pilots started requesting these Red Tail pilots [nicknames for the Tuskegee pilots who painted the tails of their planes red] because they were so good at their job. A lot of these [bomber] pilots didn’t know until after the war that they were African Americans. I think that just goes to prove that it’s not the color of your skin, it’s how you handle your job and how you prove yourself. To me, it was just incredible to hear them talk about it. They weren’t bitter. They were just happy to have the opportunity to prove themselves, and they certainly proved themselves.
Was there anything you learned while you were talking with them, or just while making the documentary in general, that surprised you or that you didn’t know before?
Gray: There was a study done in the 1920s, and it’s mentioned in the film … this study about how African Americans were not smart enough, or didn’t have the dexterity to serve in the military – they just would not make good soldiers. It was a very racist report, but it was 1925 when this report came out. [What surprised me was] how these Tuskegee Airmen used that report that came out and how they used it as motivation to prove that they could be just as good as white pilots. A lot of them talked about this report that came out in the 1920s that said that African Americans weren’t fit to serve in the military, and they used that as motivation. I didn’t realize how much motivation that report was for these guys, and also how they all were so focused, that they kind of blocked out all the noise that was going on around them.
That really was eye opening for me, that they were able to block all of that out and just remain focused on the ultimate goal, which was to become pilots.
“The Tuskegee Airmen: Return to Ramitelli” will air on WABE-TV on May 29 at 10 p.m. and again on May 31 at 4 p.m.