We are pleased to announce that the WWII US Army Enlistment Records project has been officially launched today. The project has been in development for several months, and there’s still a lot of work to be done.
That having been said, we’re satisfied that the primary goal of the project can now be achieved through the website, so we would welcome your thoughts and comments about it. You can read more about the project’s history, and the team’s motivation on the About page, but here’s a quick extract for completeness:
The project was started in order to assist historians and researchers in their task of researching individual service personnel of the US Army during WW2. While the US National Archives and Records Administration provides an electronic register of enlistment records, the facilities that the site affords are minimal. A fire at the National Personnel Records Center (St. Louis, Missouri) in 1973 saw some 50 million enlistment records destroyed. While copies of some records had been stored in other locations, and have since been restored, the vast majority were never recovered. As a result of this tragedy, attempting to research the service history of WW2 US Army personnel has become almost impossible, with only very limited information available for each record.
Using the same records upon which the NARA system is based, this project aims to develop a reliable research resource. WWII US Army Enlistment Records allows researchers to register on the site, and provide known information about records which appear in its database. It is hoped that by combining the research history and knowledge currently available on the Internet, a thorough, peer-moderated database will become available.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for kindly showing your support for the project, and we hope that it will be an invaluable resource to your research efforts. We will be adding further posts to this Blog in the coming days, including tutorials, latest news and more. You can keep up-to-date with developments and new features by subscribing to our Blog.
