WW2 overseas service

[NW Mailing List]

John

It is indeed difficult to determine whether your relative actually served overseas, unless he was one of the small percentage that were probably covered in the N&W Magazine. If he did acquire something from Japan, that would put him there post August of 1945 after the war was over. In addition, a lot of information of specifically where employees were during the war was not actually disclosed due to censorship. Even letters from overseas had to pass censors, who routinely blacked out dates and places as well as many specific details.

After the war, the magazine also covered returning employees, but it did not specifically state their service or where. This is a bit more of needle in the haystack on company materials.

You might have much better luck on ancestry.com. I was able to recover original muster rolls from one of the ships my father served on, nothing that I did not already know, but seeing the list and the names of some of his crewmates was pretty interesting. In many cases you can find enlistment records, in some cases you can recover service records from the government, but it is rather tedious and complicated. Not to mention that a rather large file in the service record archive about 1970 destroyed a number of files, but it was a relatively small percentage as I recall.

In short, there is no real easy answer to the question, it takes some detective work.

Good luck
Ken Miller

On Dec 19, 2013, at 8:02 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:


> Hi all,

> Is it possible to find out if a employe served overseas during the war? My wife's grandfather worked for the N&W at Wheelersberg Ohio. He gave grandma a lamp from Japan that story has it he got while he was there. But nobody in the family can remember him traveling, unless it was before they were married.

> Thanks, John Musgrove 

> 

> Sent from my iPhone