Please note that it always possible that other religious archives may hold documents regarding your CO ancestor than these two. A priest, minister, or other church authority may have been asked to give a reference or otherwise support the CO's petition. I would begin by finding out where the person was living (which could be on the draft registration) and what church they were a member of at the time and the appropriate archive for that location.
Also, if you have difficulty finding what you want on a website, give a phone call to the library or archive or persons on the contact information for the site.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS : QUAKER CO's This collection's focus is the Quakers, the peace efforts of the church as a whole and the personal papers of individuals. Haverford College is in Haverford, Delaware County, Pennsylvania
MENNONITE CHURCH USA ARCHIVES : Amish, Mennonite Located in North Newton, Harvey County, Kansas, this is a major archive for records of the Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren, CO's. It includes CIVILIAN PUBLIC SERVICE (CPS) records.
IMPORTANT TO KNOW : Previously I mentioned that some CO's SERVED IN THE MILITARY in NON-COMBAT ROLES and that could include work camps.
HOWEVER THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS WORKING FOR THECIVILIAN PUBLIC SERVICE INSTEAD, meaning that person was never in the military and thus did not serve in the military. THIS SITE HAS A LINK TO TESTIMONIALS AND INFORMATION ON THE CAMPS AND WORK THERE FOR MEN AND VOLUNTEER WOMEN!
Excerpt: Civilian Public Service (CPS) was a program developed at the onset of WWII which provided those whose conscience forbade them to kill, the opportunity to do work of national importance under civilian direction rather than go to war. Nearly 12,000 men made this choice, and many women voluntarily joined the cause. They fought forest fires, worked in mental institutions, planted trees, did dairy testing and served as subjects for medical experiments in more than 150 camps scattered throughout the United States.
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The military records for those who registered and served, or did not, are open to the GENERAL PUBLIC through the National Archives of the United States (NARA) since it has been more than 62 years since World War II. The records are not all digitalized or in databases and so we often must ask an archivist for help.
This is the link to the page with very much information. To focus, this excerpt:
147.2.2 Records of the Selective Service System, 1940-47 (This is a record group)
Textual Records: Central correspondence, 1940-47. Correspondence concerning protests over various aspects of the draft, 1940-44. Correspondence relating to men released from active duty, 1941; and to appointments in the Selective Service system, 1940-47. Microfilm copies of the lotteries held in 1940, 1941, and 1942 to determine registrant classification order, 1940-42 (11 rolls). Issuances of national headquarters, state directors, and local boards, 1940-47. Microfilm copy of Methods For Preservation of Selective Service Records, vols. 1-5, 1944-45 (2 rolls). Case files on conscientious objectors, 1940-47, with indexes (including 4 rolls of microfilm). Microfilm copy of case files, including "cover sheets" on conscientious objectors who served in work camps, 1941-45 (282 rolls), with index (2 rolls). Locator cards for conscientious objectors sent to camps, 1941-47 (including 9 rolls of microfilm). Microfilm copy of case files on registrants appealing to the President, 1941-47 (226 rolls), with index (12 rolls of microfilm). Microfilm copy of the docket book of the Presidential Appeal Board, 1941-47 (5 rolls). Microfilm copy of records of the President's Amnesty Board, 1941-47 (4 rolls). Retained sample of appeal and local board records, 1940- 47, for Utah Appeal Board and for local boards in the Bronx, NY; Franklin City, MA; Holmes County, MS; and Pima County, AZ.
Note that "Local boards" comment. It is always possible that a Local Board presided in the case of your ancestor.
Camps are were some COs performed service state-side in supportive, non-combat roles. They were called Civilian Public Service Camps.
My suggestion is to first get the draft registration, then find out if the person WAS drafted and if they served. If they were successful in their Objection, you will likely need to give the archivist all the information you have from those earlier documents.
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Are you a child or spouse of a veteran? A "Next-of-Kin" is defined this way: Veterans and Next-of-Kin of deceased veterans have the same access rights to the record. The next-of-kin is defined as any of the following: the un-remarried widow or widower, son, daughter, father, mother, brother, or sister of the deceased veteran. Next-of-kin must provide proof of the death of the veteran, such as a copy of the death certificate, a letter from the funeral home, or a published obituary...
The GENERAL PUBLIC must respect a 62 year privacy law on military records.
(U.S. involvement in Vietnam spanned from the early 1950's to 1973,escalating significantly from advisors to combat troops in July 1965. The Selective Service military draft was used to induct over 1.8 million men. A birth-date lottery began in December 1969. (The 62 years is for the DISCHARGE DATE so if the person was discharged in 1965 the records should be public next year.)
THE DETAILS FOR OBTAINING A MILITARY RECORD ARE HERE : NARA PERSONNEL RECORDS OF THE U.S. MILITARY This is a start. I have never personally found a World War II Draft Registration in which a CO was noted, but I hear some do.
According to NARA the primary place to find CO information for your ancestor is:
The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in Saint Louis, Missouri, which holds the official military personnel files (OMPF's) for those who served including the conscientious objectors who did serve but in non-combatant roles.
The collection you will likely be directed to or have an archivist at NARA look into for you is called: Record Group 147, which includes documentation on Conscientious Objectors (COs).
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I don't believe in photographing gravestones that belong to people I'm not related to, but I did take a couple photos of MEMORIALS in this cemetery. As stated on the previous post, there are a number of burials of military associated soldiers from multiple conflicts.
Wilmington Cemetery is said to have over 9000 burials but then most must be in unmarked graves. This list of CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS is interesting. I wonder if these are persons who died in the Civil War or who were veterans who had served and if they were all local men. I also wonder if they ever lived at the Drum Barracks about a mile away.
I claim copyright on these photos but if you're using them for your personal Genealogy book that you're distributing to your family it's OK to use them i.e. noncommercial use.
I was recently able to visit the second oldest cemetery in Los Angeles, in Wilmington, California which is in the South Bay area not far from the Port of Los Angeles (which is the Ports of San Pedro and Long Beach).
People had begun decorating for the Day of the Dead celebration there with marigolds and other flowers and vibrant decorations. There are some fairly recent burials and a good number of them are of Hispanic people, likely Roman Catholic. Many of these gravestones have images - be they photos or some new etching technology - of the person or the couple - who are buried. It is my idea that some families are adding their loved ones to graves that have been in the family a while.
But more on the burials in a bit.
This is a flat gravestone cemetery and from the signage I had no idea how large it really is until I got into it. It's a square of land with some old trees not far from the railroad tracks with some of the containers that came on ships to the harbor visible.
It was established in 1857 by Phineas Banning. That means that it was in existence before Phineas Banning built his large house across the way in 1864. There are some very old burials there.
Excerpt: It is the oldest active graveyard in Los Angeles. Pioneer families buried here include Banning, Carson, and Sepulveda. There are 37 Civil War veterans, and soldiers from the Spanish-American War and from the Normandy D-Day invasion.
***
This is the cemetery used by some of the Bannings who lived in the Banning House. Which is a ten minute walk away in a beautiful well-kept park.
The Banning family had a number of children who died as babies buried there. And a wife who died relatively young. A William Banning has a grave stone that states that he was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1841 and died in Wilmington, California in 1891. Yes, Wilmington in California was named after the town in Delaware and the Bannings started out as Yankees, which might have everything to do with Phineas siding with the Union for the Civil War.
Excerpt: Phineas Banning—entrepreneur, the founder of the city of Wilmington, and “the Father of the Port of Los Angeles”—built the 23-room residence in 1864. Subsequent generations lived in it until 1925; in 1927 the residence, stagecoach barn, and the surrounding 20 acres of parkland were acquired by the City of Los Angeles.
***
It also not far from the Civil War Barracks which Phineas Banning donated to the Union Army during the Civil War. DRUM BARRACKS ORG
The Drum Barracks has an archive but my experience with that was that they would prefer you do your research elsewhere since much or all of the archive is duplicated elsewhere. Information I sent a few years ago was also not acknowledged.
According to one of the employees of the Wilmington Cemetery, the land there used to be water wells for the merchants during Banning's time.
I spent about an hour walking around the memorials. It is said that there are over 9000 burials there. Certainly it did not seem so, and there were areas where there were no gravestones at all.
To my reader-genealogy researchers, please remember this is the case with many cemeteries and one should not entirely rely on grave-stone databases. If you suspect or know that an ancestor was buried in a cemetery contact that cemetery for information. It helps if you have the death certificate that states the burial took place there, or a funeral home record.
I did not take photos of any of the graves, which I think of as disrespectful.
One of the most interesting was a small slab that announced the death of a one month old Japanese or Japanese-American baby.
There is a street in Wilmington called Opp. Opp burials included someone born in 1848 who died in 1906. I imagine they may have had some land - a farm.
There is at least one 'died in Korea' marker, some that indicate World War II took their man, and a couple that indicated that the person had served in a state militia or reserve. Last Memorial Day (2025) a local boy scout troop provided a memorial with the names of local men who had served their country.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no longer wars on this earth? (As I told a good friend of mine the other day who said "that won't happen," then I would like to be reincarnated on a better planet.)
The babies and children who died long ago made me think of vaccinations and what a difference they have made. Anyone who has seen the archival documents that reveal the babies and children who died of childhood diseases, the adults who died of TB, and the townsfolk who died of various 'plague' must know that.
Besides Mexican or Hispanic burials there were also some surnames that were Germanic or Italian or English. I don't often visit cemeteries, but I'm intrigued by the art and design of some stones and try to imagine what ornate ones must have cost when they were made. There were a good number of Masonic symbols on graves in this cemetery.
I like to find not just the oldest burials but burials of those who got a long life out of this one. Here's a little name dropping. LIPKING 1822-1909, COATES died 1914 at 71 years old, OPP 1848-1906.
I have come to hate Halloween for all the gore and horror and fright and violence it now celebrates. We actually do not need to be exposed to more violence or participate in that. I'm into the acknowledgement of those who came before us though. This is why, though I have no Hispanic or Mexican heritage, I'm more likely to contribute to a celebration such as Day of the Dead.
Persian? Siberian? Mexican? Jewish? and many more... CAN DNA SURVIVE WAR? FORCED RELOCATION? World War II?
I'm linking to one about the origins of the Poles because it takes into consideration language as well as extensive DNA research reports taken from burials of ancient peoples.
Portugal has been in the media quite a bit lately, as a good place to move to, but somehow the history of the country seems obscure to me. The country's archive goes back into the mid 1600's and yes, there is a digital archive porthole for your research to begin. A special note is that Portugal has a World War II Holocaust Collection. I was humored to read that the archive page mentions there are two bars nearby!
Excerpt: The book weights 25 pounds and is more than 1,000 pages long. It is roughly the size of the Gutenberg Bible.
Instead the word of God, it contains names - 125, 284 names. ...
All 125, 284 names have never been collected in one place. WIth 75 incarnation sites - some, like Manzanar and Heart Mountain, well-known, others forgotten --- records are scattered. ...
Before the Depression the transatlantic liners had been plying their trade across the ocean with nearly full capacity in both directions. It was a boom time for the travel industry and women passengers of all classes benefitted from the more comfortable conditions on board and the comparatively cheap fares for long-distance ocean voyages, while their seafaring sisters enjoyed ample employment in physically demanding but remunerative jobs afloat. But as the crisis deepened wealthier passengers canceled their plans for leisure and visits, communicating with their commercial contacts overseas by letter or telegram rather than in person. Cut-throat competition drove ticket prices down by 20 percent as companies struggled to fill their ships. Cunard cut its third-class transatlantic return ticket price from 20 pounds to 16 pounds per person, which meant that a 6,400 mile round trip from Britain to America now cost approximately one and a half pennies per mile. (Page 184)
(Note that some women employees on the ships stayed employed simply because it was less expensive that living off board and most accepted that their tips were paltry.)
This book is just so good and I've excerpted so much. It goes into the World War II era.
Today is Saint Patrick's Day in the United States, a celebration of Irishness. More specifically Catholic Irish and the wearing of the Green. (Protestant Irish is the wearing of the Orange.) Though it's said everyone has a wee bit of Irish, and I tend to think of that meaning in spirit, I'm actually one of those Americans who has no Irish roots at all. (Several of my extended family members married Irish roots people and so the wee bit of Irish trope holds true in their children and grand children.) Never the less, it doesn't take personally having roots in a certain ethnicity or country to do the research or to understand the contributions of Irish Americans to the United States of America.
This morning as I prepared to post about Irish genealogy, I was listening to the latest war news. Having spent the last 22 days listening and reading about the war perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine, I've wondered what I could possibly say or do that would be appropriate. I have cried. I'm frustrated. I'm confused. I'm scared - in particular that more people on this earth are going to starve.
You see, I live in a city that already has thousands of "refugees" native to this land, the homeless. I do not think that we can absorb more refugees from any nation locally. Of course if a person is coming in from Ukraine to be supported by relatives, I would never object to that. The situation is tricky because there is most certainly a huge population of illegal immigrants here and large zones of the city have been taken over by certain ethnic groups, not because they were - as happened in the past - unable to live anywhere else and ghettoized. Rather there is an attitude that this is not the United States while accepting and relying upon every government program and benefit that we as a whole finance.
There is not enough affordable housing and people with long waits for Section 8 housing (a government program that pays some or most of the rent) have difficulty finding a landlord to rent to them. People who are working two jobs cannot afford to rent a one bedroom apartment and are in a room. The problem has been in the works for decades and our politicians and officials are part of the problem.
The other day I heard a British man - I think this was the House of Commons - talking about the $350 a month thank you that the British government is willing to pay people who will take in Ukrainian refugees. He mentioned the thousands in that country who are in "bed-sits" already. It's the same situation.
Canada's offer to take all who come is the most realistic frankly. There is plenty of room in Canada. 80% of the population there lives within 100 miles of the Unites States border. Already a huge Ukrainian roots based population is in Canada.
As I watch apartment buildings being blown up in Ukraine, I realize it is going to cost millions to rebuild apartments to rehouse the Ukrainians. Ukraine is where Ukrainians need to live.
It has been said by various persons in recent days that the West forgot World War II. I think that may be possible in the United States since The Greatest Generation is dying out and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren only have them to tell about that experience in Europe, in Japan, and domestically. (If this is your family be sure to interview and record your World War II era members about their lives before they pass. Many have to be prompted.)
However, I do not think Europe has forgotten because the war was carried out on their land and their cities. I think that memory, that HISTORY, is a factor in the overall ability to understand what the threat of Russia to Ukraine and to Europe is.
Things have changed since World War II. Now there is a much higher threat of using nuclear bombs that devastate whole cities and regions. There is greater variety of lethal weapons, including the potential of germ warfare, and surveillance and communication have changed our lives and how warfare is conducted.
I hate war, I hate violence, and it concerns me that there are so many humans on this earth who seem to be filled with hatred and do not create, cure, improve or enhance life, but destruct.
Ex Vice President Mike Pence made the statement that he thought the Berlin Airlift was an inspiration. He thought we should be taking Humanitarian aid into Ukraine. I would love it if something like this could be done, if those participating could be assured of their safety.
The evidence is that civilians are being targeted. Russia, Russian Military, and Russian soldiers who use civilians as target practice should be ashamed but apparently are not ashamed and also apparently are lacking any spirituality. Well, this is where I, as someone partial to reincarnation, and various Christian groups that talk about redemption (the deathbed confession or conversion at the last minute) differ. While any one of us can theoretically hit the restart button and be Born Again, I do not believe all that one did before is slate whipped clean, as if a person filed bankruptcy. There is a price to pay for harming others. And if it is not paid for on this corrupt earth in life, then there is still payment due.
I feel certain that those committing war crimes, upon their own death, will feel every bit of pain they have caused not just to the individual but their entire family. I am not God and do not know exactly how it works, but the testimonials of those who have had Near Death Experiences is rather consistent. These people report reviewing their lives, being told they need to go back, and often totally transform their lives with much less emphasis on materialism and ego, and a greater care and concern for other human beings.
I found this mini documentary on the BERLIN AIR LIFT.
With so much emphasis on education today, we'll, it would be nice if you could use it! You may find yourself with a PhD and a life of debt while driving Uber or Lyft around your college town. Or maybe you've encountered a Master's Degree snob among your friends, as I have; one of my friends achieved a Master's in Marketing as the first college graduate in her family and has a superiority complex as a result but her second career as a realtor is so so. Doctor's wives with community connections and less education seem to be the competition.
One man I used to know who told me I needed an MBA, back when I had completed an Associate Degree and had to go to work, married himself an MBA and has been on the sofa with the dog a long time.
There was a time when college graduation did almost guarantee a good career start and income. Now, especially due to Covid, we're in a Topsy-Turvy world.
I currently know of a commercial photographer who is working as a school crossing guard, a pastry chef who is delivering Amazon packages, and a woman who completed a vet assistant program who feels lucky to still have her waitress job.
I can testify that libraries that opened are fairly vacant, making me wonder if there will be any need for replacing librarians who retire. Reference desk librarians don't feel like looking things up when patrons can use the internet themself.
Don't get me wrong. I love to read, love to learn, and I think there are reasons for education besides being career ready, but I think we need to start thinking about apprenticeships and being self taught and having "side hustles."
What does this have to do with a lack of what I call formal education among your ancestors? Not so long ago only the rich educated their children - their male children mostly. Heirs were educated even though they didn't have to work.
Student Loans gave people like me a chance to have an education beyond high school.
I found an article about high school drop out rates in 20th century America. Not until the 1930's did most American teens find themselves imagining they could complete high school. During the Great Depression a little more than half of the teen population was in high school. In 1940 half graduated. World War II caused a dip in attendance.
Reading the 1940 census, you may notice children working part time to support a family or children missing. They may appear elsewhere as workers, such as live in servants, or in a boarding house full of laborers. There may also be children no longer in their family groups due to early marriage (14-17), hospitalization (TB institution), living with relatives (city children sent to live and work with farming relatives), and, of course, because they died. The CCCs (1933 -1942) was a work program for unemployed
I know that there were special programs for returning veterans to complete high school. Returning vets were respected.
Did not having an education prevent people from success in life? I know our times are different, but in general no.
Here is an example from my extensive own tree. (This is not my direct line but a branch.)
Great Grandma. Europe agricultural region. No school. Orphan.
Grandma born U.S. rural mining community, family moved to large industrial city. 8th grade education. Poverty. Worked as nanny, then married high school graduate.
Mother. College Graduate. Married classmate. Worked for university whole life in administration. He built houses - own business. Two incomes. Accumulated wealth.
Their daughter. College. Married classmate. College. Year in Japan. No Masters or PhD. Video game design / IT. Great wealth.
Their son. College. In parents' business.
Heir apparent.
Of course, it doesn't always go this way.
But in 5 generations this branch went from abject poverty to respected wealth.
Perhaps the lesson is that it doesn't often happen quickly.
Today there will be memorials for the innocent people who were killed in a genocide against European Jews called The Holocaust. I'm not a Holocaust denier. I respect and use various web sites including Yad Vashem. However when we hear The Six Million, we should be aware that this is a count of Jewish victims. Many people who were not Jewish were also killed including Catholic priests, people who sympathized or helped Jews hide or escape, intelligencia... The demonic plan was to eventually also kill off people who were of the Slavic "races."
What does this mean for genealogists? I'll be writing more on this subject later in the year.
Today let's think about genocide and how that has changed populations around the world.
Let's think about how vaccines, sanitation, and nutrition help humans live longer and better lives.
A friend I talked to said a Japanese friend of hers, whose parents were relocated during World War II and lost everything, refuses to cooperate with the U.S. Census because he says our government used it to locate Japanese-Americans or Japanese aliens to do this. I'm not sure officials did use the census to locate Japanese people or Japanese-Americans for the purpose of relocation. I realize this was a terrible experience for those effected by it - whole communities. I know that here and now, if there were any group to be targeted for any purpose whatsoever, there would be ways to find those in the group. The fact is, there are other ways to locate people these days besides a census, many more ways. I suspect that back in the day authorities knew where ethnic groups were ghettoized or where they preferred to live, among others who spoke the same language and had the same cultural expectations. My own ancestors lived in these ethnic ghettos as immigrants. Our multiculturalism and mixing no longer guarantees that a given name or a surname identifies the person on a census as one ethnicity or another. Therefore I wonder about the validity of "identity politics." Are we not creatures of personality and character and soul and not just what we appear on the surface to be? Our own self-identity is what matters to us now. Besides thinking or feeling yourself to be a certain race or ethnicity though the facts (such as a DNA test or genealogy research) may indicate that you are a mix, that self identity also includes our gender and sexual orientation. The fact is that census takers used observation to determine that someone was male or female, W, M, or C, back in the day. (And I've seen the person considered C or M in the South to be considered W in the North on census.) I had a client who immediately assumed because some names of his ancestors were German that they were Jewish. He was wrong. I asked my friend who is upset about the Japanese internment, well what if they used the census to identify and locate Jews for round up? She gulped. What is the purpose of a census? It's statistical. It is used to determine what's what - what's needed - and to ask for money from the government (as well as common citizens through taxation or donations) for various purposes and to make policy. Certainly no census has ever been done for the purposes of future genealogy buffs. An example that many Americans can understand is homeless counts, which are usually under counts since many homeless people do not cooperate or cannot be found to be counted. Agencies and the government look to this count to ask for and get funding appropriate to their location. They don't get enough money to deal with all the people who come through their doors asking for help because maybe a third of those who are actually homeless were counted. We can't know if we will be for or against any particular change that might be based on census, but we certainly would like to know how many citizens there are so we can also know how many are voting. We'd like to know how many children live in a district to plan for their education. And I think we'd like to know how many people are living in the U.S. who want to be citizens. Several years ago I met a school teacher who showed up to teach in the fall and had an almost empty classroom. Due to housing costs many students had left that school and their parents seemed to not have re-enrolled them elsewhere as there had been no requests to have grades or other documents transferred to another district. (It was assumed that these families had become homeless and not enrolled their children in any school.) And there is a precedent as any genealogist who uses the past U.S. Census knows of asking these questions: Are you an alien? In process of citizenship? What year did you become a citizen? (And we genealogists depend on these documents to find out where people came from so we can cross the ocean with our research.) I once wondered if my own ancestors hid out, afraid to answer the door because of the conditions they lived in prior to America, but I did find them - their surname horribly misspelled - on one of those pages that is faded and damaged. There is also a historical precedent for blocking or not allowing the citizenship process to go forwards which prevented those of a certain ethnicity - including mine - to be considered a potential threat to the security of the United States because of World War I. Thus some immigrants who wanted citizenship years earlier had to wait until after that war. As for reparations, I cannot even imagine how we would decide who deserves "reparations" for slavery prior to the Emancipation decades ago other than using DNA tests and coming up with some mathematical formula for how many dollars for what percentage of slave-identified genetics. And what of so many of us who never owned slaves and come from families that never owned slaves? Why would we pay, assume we are "guilty" of enslaving for our skin color, and owe others based on their racial identity because of our racial identity? That's not fair. I'm not responsible for what anyone in my family history (and mine came here after the abolishment of slavery) did in the past. I'm not responsible for the actions of people I never met and wasn't raised by. I'm only responsible as an adult for my own actions in this life. As they say, you can't choose your family, you can only choose your friends. I don't want to punish others for their ancestry any more than I want to punish some upstanding citizen who happens to have a criminal in the family. What about those people who have slave heritage but generations later have moved beyond it or those who have African heritage but were never slaves? Should those of Catholic heritage ask for reparations from WASPS because they were horribly exploited by the Robber Barons as immigrants (pre-union) who worked six days a week, back to back "shifts" of 14-16 hours, for example? When does prejudice end? It ends with our personal behavior in this life. One person mentioned to me the reparations for Jews who's families were killed in the Holocaust or had property seized. While I don't know exactly how that worked in Germany - or Israel - there are some differences. The first is that living people were able to PROVE what they lost, mostly because it was fairly recent history, so names, photographs, addresses, titles to property and so on could be used. Secondly, Jewish-Americans have told me that they did not ALL get the money. Rather one person in their family proved what they had lost, did the applications and got whatever was offered. So they would say to me, "I didn't apply because so and so already got the money." And it was generally not much. Generally it was a token - a token apology of sorts. It's not that I don't have a heart. I'd rather see the money spent on education and other programs to help those who need help here and now,no matter what their heritage. C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights Reserved including Internet and International rights
This post was edited for clarity on September 3, 2019
NPR: TOY MONKEY REUNITED HOLOCAUST FAMILY EXCERPT: After the war, my father moved to the United States. He left Sweden for New York as a young man of 22. He was an orphan. He had no siblings and he was alone. Again, he picked the toy monkey to come with him. But by now it was something different: the most tangible connection to his childhood, to a fleeting moment of innocence.
This book intrigued me, not just because it's about one of the most convincing stories
of reincarnation in modern times, but because Bruce Leininger, the father of James, the child who remembered he was a World War II pilot who burned up and crashed in his plane in Japan, used research methods that any genealogist or family historian can relate to!
The devout Christian father had issues with the very idea of reincarnation, but slowly he became convinced as he decided to apply research methods to the many small comments that his son, beginning at about age 2, made. Little James knew planes and plane parts, but he also named some of the men he was associated with back in the day as well as the name of the body his soul inhabited in the last. And so Bruce attempted to get military records (but ran into the problem of not being a family member), contacted men who remembered the pilot, met with them (claiming he was only writing a book, though as we see he eventually did), and discovered that these old veterans were not as dismissive as he feared. The story is interesting and convincing and Leininger and his wife (James' mom) Andrea, along with Ken Gross, manage to build their story so that you too will feel no stone was left unturned!
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HALLOWED GROUNDS focuses on the cemeteries in Europe where soldiers from World War I and World War II are buried. Turns out that simple crosses lined up like soldiers feature in most of these cemeteries. Most touching is that some Europeans have picked a soldier, learned of his sacrifice for their freedom, and have adopted him, bringing flowers since his own family is not likely to visit. These cemeteries are in England and France, Italy, Luxemberg, Belgium. Why was I surprised to learn that there are locations in Tunisia and the Philippines?
My meditation on this film was also that, sadly, we seem to be essentially hung up on World War II. What about Viet Nam? What about undeclared war? I think maybe if it's not officially a war than it can't have official heroes (and heroines!)
According to this film at least 125,000 American military men and women are buried in these cemeteries. Then there are so many more who are missing. Probably forever.
Worth watching!
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FROM THE ARTICLE LINKED : More than 1,000 women joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots Program And 38 of them lost their lives flying non-combat missions during the war But their contribution to the war effort remained unacknowledged for years It wasn't until 1977 that WASP members even received veteran status Arlington officials said this year they don't qualify due to space limitations But President Obama signed a bill into law giving them that right.
The population register, taken in late September 1939, just after after the outbreak of the second world war, is the only surviving record of the population of England and Wales between 1921 and 1951. The digital version was released on Monday by Findmypast in association with the National Archives.
The register, compiled by 65,000 enumerators and sent to every household in England and Wales, documents the lives of 41 million people. It gives the names of the inhabitants at each address, their date of birth, marital status and occupation.
...
The population register, taken in late September 1939, just after after the outbreak of the second world war, is the only surviving record of the population of England and Wales between 1921 and 1951. The digital version was released on Monday by Findmypast in association with the National Archives. (In Great Britain not the U.S.)
The register, compiled by 65,000 enumerators and sent to every household in England and Wales, documents the lives of 41 million people. It gives the names of the inhabitants at each address, their date of birth, marital status and occupation.
Folker, then just four, did not know it, but he had been chosen to be part of the new 'breed' of supposedly genetically-superior German beings, who would replace millions of the 'impure' - Jews, gipsies, homosexuals, blacks - after they had been exterminated in Hitler's death camps. Having being ripped from the arms of his parents when German tanks rolled into the Crimea in 1942, Folker was first taken by SS officers to a German medical institute, where doctors measured every part of his body, checking for any 'Jewish aspects' - for example, dark hair, pointed noses, circumcision - before he was declared suitable.
He had been selected to be a member of the 'Lebensborn' - The Fount of Life - Himmler's breeding programme to safeguard the future of the Thousand-Year Reich by providing 'pure' future generations to replace those lost by war.
Devised in 1935, the Lebensborn scheme operated on different levels to provide 'Aryan' children for Hitler's mad schemes of eugenics.
As well as the stealing of blond children from families in occupied areas, another part of the scheme involved special 'breeding clinics' where pure German SS officers were told to mate with suitable German women.
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I have a story to tell about this...
I once was introduced to an old Blue Eyed woman and was later told by her house-mate that she had absolutely no idea about her heritage and had no family. My associate speculated that she was one of the children born in Hitler's breeding program. She did look "German," to me and was about the right age. The woman lived alone in a house in Los Angeles, had never married or had children, and was quite isolated. How she afforded anything was a mystery.
When I read this article I thought about her, and others who have an unknown or unspoken heritage, for which they personally have no responsibility at all.
Sometimes people will challenge me, stating that I could not possible do their genealogy. Often they are wrong, simply they are unaware of how much public information is out there. However, in a case like this I would be stymied.
HALLOWED GROUNDS - AMERICA'S OVERSEAS CEMETERIES : ANCESTRY WORKSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW