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| Source: Axios.com. |
This Memorial Day I am presenting information about a unique and amazingly extensive effort conducted by the United States to return over 170,000 World War II deceased U.S. soldiers from 87 countries around the world after World War II.
The Graves Registration Company was to supervise the identification and burial of the dead, collect and dispose of the personal effects, and locate and register battlefield burials and cemeteries according to the first T/O 10-297 published on January 1, 1940.
That was just the beginning of the process that was concluded between 1947 and 1951.
During the war, all efforts were made to locate World War II deceased soldiers remains from foreign fields. The remains were first buried in temporary cemeteries overseas until after the war when, if the family wished, the bodies were transported back home.
The following illustration shows the activities performed by the various elements of the Graves Registration Company.
After the war, dedicated funeral ships transported bodies to either New York (actually Brooklyn) or San Francisco (Oakland) depending upon the theatre they came from. The remains were then transported by rail on funeral trains on specially refitted cars for carrying caskets to 16 central locations around the country before the individual bodies were transported to the final resting place chosen by the family.
The United States of America was the only country which repatriated their Valiant Deceased Service Personnel (Soldier Dead) after WWII as well as foreign wars before and after.
When the U.S. entered WWII, the Government made the determination that we would not return our Soldier Dead from overseas until after the cessation of hostilities. Following victories in both Europe and the Pacific, the global initiative "The Return of the World War II Dead Program" was launched by the USA to locate aircraft crash sites, comb former battlefields for isolated graves, and disinter temporary military cemeteries around the globe. This program was intended to be completed within 5 years.
The sacred responsibilities for locating, identifying, moving, notification and, based on the wishes of the Next Of Kin (NOK) - either returning their U.S. Army Soldier Dead back to the USA or providing final resting in a Permanent American Military Cemetery Overseas - were honorably born by the personnel of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS, or often just GRS) of the U.S. Army QuarterMaster Corps (QMC). |
Here is a link for more about that.
IDPFs
Below is a period newspaper clipping reporting on the arrival of one of those funeral ships.
New York, Aug. 17 – AP – The bodies of 5,864 American war dead, including many who fell in the bitter fighting at St. Lo, are scheduled to arrive at the Brooklyn Army base Thursday aboard the U.S. Army transport Lawrence Victory.
The dead are the largest single group to be returned since the arrival of the first war dead vessel in October, 1947, the New York Port of Embarkation said. Most of them originally interred in military cemeteries at Limey and Marigny, France....
Here is that link.
Funeral Ships - Heartland Genealogy
And below is the link for more about the Funeral ships, which were white with a large purple band around the ship. (Funeral trains were marked by purple flags.)
When the funeral ship doors were opened and thousands of stacked caskets were revealed to waiting family members, it was an overwhelming scene.
That is a part of United States history I think we should know. The extent and cost of the effort was something that only the United States was willing and able to conduct.
Below is a link to a seven-hundred-page tome on the project to return the World War II Dead.. It is a detailed research resource.
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