Mathews Serial Number Lookup
Mathews Serial Number Lookup

Spring 2006, Vol. 38, No. 1 | Genealogy Notes

By Theodore J. Hull

Mathews Serial Number Lookup

Nine young men who have enlisted in the Regular Army wait outside the Fair Park recruiting station in Dallas, Texas, in January 1946. The AAD resource has 9.2 million records for enlistments in the Army, Enlisted Reserve Corps, and Women s Army Auxiliary Corps for the period 1938—1946. (111-SC-235858)

World War II Army Enlistment Records provide a rich source of information for genealogists and other researchers at the National Archives and Records Adminstration interested in Army enlistees in World War II. Since their release through NARA's Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource in May 2004, they have quickly become the most popular series of electronic records accessible through that resource.

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AAD, as the first installment of NARA's Electronic Records Archives (ERA) program, is leading the way to providing improved access to NARA's rich holdings of electronic records. In the first year, thousands of AAD users performed more than 700,000 queries against the enlistment records file alone. With 9.2 million records for enlistments in the Army, Enlisted Reserve Corps, and Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, this should come as little surprise.

In addition to genealogists, individuals who served in the war (and their children and grandchildren) are using the records to document military service.

The enlistment records are one of 45 series of electronic records currently available on AAD. Those series contain more than 85 million historic electronic records created by more than 20 federal agencies on a wide range of topics. The enlistment records complement other World War II–era electronic records in AAD, including the Records of Duty Locations for Naval Intelligence Personnel, Records About Japanese Americans Relocated During World War II, and Records of World War II Prisoners of War.

This article provides information about how the enlistment file came to be in AAD, along with some tips and pointers for finding records in the file.

Preparing the Records for Access in AAD

The story of the electronic World War II Army Enlistment Record file begins with the disastrous July 12, 1973, fire at NARA's National Personnel Records Center for Military Personnel Records (NPRC). The fire destroyed approximately 16–18 million Official Military Personnel Files, including the records of approximately 80 percent of U.S. Army personnel discharged between November 1, 1912, and January 1, 1960. Following the fire, NPRC staff began identifying various series of records in NARA's custody that could assist them in reconstructing the lost basic service data. With these alternative sources, they could verify military service and provide a Certification of Military Service.

Among the sources identified was a series of 16mm microfilm of computer punch cards titled 'Microfilm Copy of the Army Serial Number File, 1938–1946.' The Personnel Services Support Division of the Adjutant General's Office had created the microfilm in 1947, and NARA accessioned it in 1959. The original punch cards, which contained basic information about enlistees at the time they entered Army service, were destroyed after microfilming, a common practice at that time. The NPRC began using a copy of the microfilm, but it presented some challenges. First, there were 1,586 rolls of microfilm, making manual review very difficult. Second, the punch cards were microfilmed in serial number order, making a search by name impossible. Third, a variety of punch card formats were used to record the enlistment data over time, and documentation of the various recording formats was hard to identify.

A goal of the NPRC was to have as many of the reconstructed records available to its staff electronically to speed response time to its over one million annual requestors. In 1992, NPRC contacted NARA's Center for Electronic Records seeking some assistance with these challenges.

The Center's director was familiar with the Bureau of the Census's Film Optical Sensing Device for Input to Computers (FOSDIC) system and its successful use in processing the 1960 through 1990 decennial censuses. Census returns, which were essentially 'bubble' forms where answers were supplied by blacking out the appropriate circle, were microfilmed, and then FOSDIC extracted the answers from the image. Since the Bureau of the Census had already modified the original FOSDIC to process a series of 300 million microfilmed punch cards containing weather data, it responded affirmatively to the challenge presented by NARA.

The Bureau of the Census completed the project during federal fiscal year 1994 on time and below budget. They successfully converted 1,374 of the 1,586 rolls, or 87 percent of the rolls of microfilm. The 212 remaining rolls containing approximately 1.5 million punch cards could not be converted because the card images were so dark that the scanner produced few, or no, usable records. In July 1994, the Bureau of the Census provided NARA with 1,374 data files (one per converted roll) on twelve 3480-class tape cartridges. NPRC received copies of the files, and they worked with Center for Electronic Records staff to identify the relevant War Department Technical Manuals containing technical documentation for the punch cards. Additional code tables and documentation continue to be identified among NARA's vast textual records holdings from World War II.

A punch card for James N. Tronolone. Information from punch cards was converted to a database searchable through AAD. (Records of the Adjutant General s Office, 1917— , RG 407)

The unique characteristic of the files created by the Bureau of the Census was that FOSDIC read each punch card image up to 10 times in an attempt to create a clean record and extract all characters from the original punch card. Usually, the first read would contain the majority of data extracted from the card image. If all data could not be extracted, subsequent reads of the card image would result in additional records containing periods for characters successfully read on previous reads and alphanumeric characters for those interpreted on the current read. Varying interpretations of the same character may have occurred across the multiple reads. A blank record separates records or groups of records pertaining to an individual punch card image. Each file also contained a header record indicating the box and microfilm roll number and an end of file record. In cases where FOSDIC could not interpret any information from a punch card or series of punch cards within a file, FOSDIC inserted a record indicating 'ONE OR MORE RECORDS WERE UNREADABLE AT THIS LOCATION.'

These features presented challenges to the NPRC because the alphanumeric data were spread over multiple records, making it hard to use and interpret. The large number of files still presented a logistical problem for identifying and searching for individuals, especially given the computer technology of that time. During the 1990s, NPRC collected code books and began an analysis of the records while NARA's St. Louis Data Systems Center created early edit programs in an attempt to merge best guesses into one record. Given the complexities of the files, however, and the limited ability to search and locate individual records, NARA undertook no additional processing of the electronic version of the 'Microfilm Copy of the Army Serial Number File, 1938–1946.'

That is, until 2002. In that year, staff took another look at the languished project, primarily because of the newly developed Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource. They determined that to get the records ready for AAD, the project should be approached in two phases. The first phase involved 'merging' the 1,374 files into 12 files, corresponding to the number of computer tape cartridges provided by the Bureau of the Census. The purpose was to reduce the number of files to a manageable number and allow for an overall evaluation of the scope, conten