Service numbers

Ive been trying to look up my fathers Naval service records to find out if any medals were due to him and basically find out what he did in WW-2. I know he was a P.O.W.and escaped . Every avenue I’ve tried asks for his service number and I don’t have it. Is there any way to find out what it is? He served in the Philippines, 42-46.

 

This letter and a form letter from President Truman are all the paperwork I have. The way I understand it , my dad was liberated by the Phillipine guerillas and he stayed and fought beside them until MacArthur returned. Since his ship was gone he was reassigned to Clark Airfield and upon his discharge he was retained at Clark as a civilian, I believe he kept that position until he returned to the States in1951. He was in charge of inventory of military supplies, He told me that once a lot was accounted for , it was taken out to a cliff and bulldozed into the ocean. I do not know the name of his ship, but he was captured while setting up a coast watcher base on some island that was supposed to be deserted.

 

Thank You ! I had thought that he was on the O’Brien but when I searched for crew listings I didn’t find his name so I just assumed my memory was wrong. He never talked too much to me about the war, but I overheard him talking once to another Navy vet about the destroyer getting rammed or bombed by an airplane.

 

820 48 46 is apparently not his service number, when I entered it at vetrecs.gov , it came up as invalid.

 

Ok, got it straightened out, I wasn’t supposed to put those spaces between the numbers. BUT !! Here’s a puzzle, if my dad was assigned to the O’Brien on July 1st 1945 , he either never made it or he was flown back because the O’Brien was at Mare island on that date getting fixed, and then she joined the third fleet and headed for Japan. So, how did my dad wind up at Luzón at the end of the war , and where in the blazes was he between 42 and 45 ?

 

Many members have had good luck hiring researchers if you get totally stumped. I have used Redbird and Golden Arrow Research with good results.There are others.
Good luck

 

Lou, Thanks for posting that document, can you tell me exactly what it means ? Everything Im finding out so far is after is after Jul. 1, 1945, so that poses the question, where the heck was my dad between 42 and 45 ? He was supposedly involved in setting up coast watchers, was that classified or something ? How did he get from the Great Lakes boot camp to Luzon in the first place ? He had to have been on another ship. what does his rating mean,, slc (tm) ?

 

Ok, I think I got this part, he was transferred to Subic for discharge. Sorry I’m so dense! I got my request for service records sent out to the National Archives this morning, now I wait. I couldn’t have done it without help from you guys,Thanks again !

 

Well, it’s starting to look like my dads war stories were a bunch of baloney to impress my mom when they were dating. Mom found my Dads discharge papers and since he didn’t enlist until July of 43, he certainly wasn’t in the Bataan march like Mom insists. As a matter of fact, It doesn’t look like he even left the States until he was assigned to the OBrien in May of 45. The discharge papers are pretty hard to read.

 

I was trying to but Im doing something wrong. I have it in my photo album file, tell me how to post it . This is an ipad mini 2

 

I’ve been trying to upload the photo of the discharge papers but I’m getting an error alert that says the file is too large. What does that mean? It’s only one photo.

 

Ok, what I did manage to do was create an album, I think. I then put in a pic of the discharge paper, maybe you can see it now ?

 

From your album, click on one of the images. After the page loads, there should be a "Share This Media" box in the bottom right corner of the page. Click on the URL under "Share Image" and copy. On the Tool Bar of the posting window, click on the Image icon (looks like a photograph), paste the URL, and click on "Insert".