The National Archives and Records Administration is the official depository for World War II veteran's records. The records are housed in the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri.

On July 12, 1973, a fire at the St. Louis center destroyed about 80 percent of the records for Army personnel from World War II and 75 percent of the records for Air Force personnel with surnames from "Hubbard" through "Z" who were discharged between September 25, 1947 and January 1, 1964.

The remaining documents contain millions of personnel, health, and medical records for discharged and deceased veterans of all services during the 20th century.

The veteran, or next-of-kin if the veteran is deceased, must authorize release of information. The next of kin can be the surviving spouse who has not remarried, father, mother, son, daughter, sister, or brother. The authorization must be in writing and include the signature of the veteran or next-of-kin.

The information that is available to the next-of-kin includes the active duty record with any outpatient, dental, and mental health treatment, and inpatient hospital records.

Limited information from Official Military Personnel Files is releasable to the general public without the consent of the veteran or the next-of-kin.

Certain information is needed to locate military service records. This includes the veteran's complete name used while in service, service number or social security number, branch of service, and dates of service. The veteran's date and place of birth and date and place of death are helpful to separate out people with the same name.

The form that needs to be filled out is Standard Form SF180, Request Pertaining to Military Records. There are several ways to order the form. Copies of SF 180 can be requested by mail from National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, 9700 Page Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63132-5100. On the Internet, the form can be downloaded at http://vetrecs.archives.gov.

Most requests are processed without cost. Response time varies, but you should plan on three to seven months. The facility has a backlog of over 200,000 requests and receives 5,000 requests daily.

The National Archives has a list of World War II Casualties on their website. This includes the name of the soldier, serial number, rank and type of casualty. Entries in the list are arranged by name of county and then alphabetically by name of deceased. The list is part of the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) and is online.

1. Go to http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/.
2. Press the Yellow search button to go to the Basic search screen.
3. Enter War Casualties in curly braces AND Navy in the Keywords box.
4. Select the limit results radio button for 100.
5. Select the box marked Descriptions of Archival Materials linked to digital copies
6. Press the Go button.
7. When hits are returned for your search, view the full result of your hit by selecting the Title link.

© 2000–2009

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.