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Database Update: Reached the end of the war

With my laser focus on just adding sailors on and off the boston, I have reached September 1945 when the war ended. Given the gaps on the records and the readable records this will take a while to completely clean up, but I have 2,363 records to date in the database with some form of sailor ID, First Name, Last Name and many with enlistment place and date records. Currently, I need to add 1,466 records of sailors departures after the war was over, we’ve already have 5,713 records of arrivals and departures. I also have about 22 records where a sailor left the ship without arriving, arrived or departed twice in succession (which is obviously an error!), I have about 7 orphan records where I have Sailor information and no add or received records (this happens when I find an error in the navy ID and fix it in the sailor record and forget to fix the on/off records). Given my original records from Frank Studenski’s diary I expect to add an additional 127 sailors who I believe have been missed due to unreadable records.

One interesting data point which I’d like to analyze further is the number of sailors who went to the hospital after the ship arrived in San Pedro in May of 1945 looks very high. My plan is to do a separate Hospital analysis.

We’ve recorded a few deaths, during the records, but I’d like to correlate these with the Deck Log to find out exactly what happened. The few I know about were from natural causes and one was electrocution.

As I said before, Since april-may of 1945 I’ve lost enlistment data for new sailors added in 1945, the data simply wasn’t recorded because it looks like the navy was preparating for computerized records and decided they no longer had to record where each sailor enlist and the enlistment date for every record. I’ll have to fix the display for these sailor records, because it says they enlisted at “,” which looks dumb. I’ve processed 985 pages of records for sailors coming on off the boston, I have 187 pages left to process.

I’ve made a decision that since this blog is about the BOSTON in World War II AND I’m not going to add sailors who joined the boston after the war was actually over. If you disagree with me let me know and we can discuss it, just hit the contact button and let me know.

thanks,
Bill

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Database update: Remembering July 4th

Last night as I watched fireworks and heard lots of patriotic music and saw fireworks, I thought of my Dad and the many soldiers, sailors and air personnel who have participated in wars for our country. I wondered whether they had mixed reactions to seeing and hearing the BOOM of fireworks, since they witnessed a more deadly kind. My dad talked about being able to nearly grab a Japanese Zero as it flew close to the Signal Deck on the BOSTON where he watched the expert gunners on the BOSTON cut it into pieces.

The Sailor database on this site is progressing! Apologies to the friends of Officers, I will figure out the Officers on the ship after I finish the enlisted men. I have 1,172 microfiche pages of sailor personnel records, as I progressed in this project I decided to start with just the sailor records that involved arriving on board (Received) and departing the ship (Transferred). Once all the arrivals and departures are processed I’ll return to the promotions, discipline, re-enlistments, etc. in the personnel record. When this is complete, I’d like to add deck log records by sailor.

With 1,172 total pages, I’ve just completed page 752. Some pages are tougher than others, some pages are nearly unreadable, but I’m able to get fragments of information and find the sailor. Some information records may be lost if the entry record and the departing records are too poor. One record change that recently happened was in about august of 1944, enlistment dates and citys of enlistment were dropped. This was interesting data and probably about 400 of our sailors may not have this interesting data.

When this project started I had simply LAST NAME, First initials from a copy of Frank Studenski’s diary my brother found. These records were from late in the war and represented about 1800 sailors. I took these records and scanned them, and inputted them into a database. Since then I’ve gone to NARA in Washington DC and I’ve received the official USS Boston sailor records. I’ve now added the Naval ID, full first name, and enlistment data where I have it. I’ve created a linked table which lists every time a sailor arrives and leaves the BOSTON; This table now has 5,066 records of individual sailor arrivals and departures. I’ve created three other tables for change of rank, discipline, and miscellaneous info like re-enlistment, change of name, etc. I’m not really updating these tables until I finish the arrival/departure work.

It’s been about 14 months of on and off work and I’m hoping to finish before computers become obsolete. 🙂

Happy record searching,
Bill

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The fastest way to a promotion is through Hell

As I’m processing promotions for January 1944 (so far we have over 220 and I’m only half way through the month), I kept processing firemen promotions.  Many promotion for firemen came three at a time, one month after the other.  So I got curious, I had an image of a these guys in fire suits putting out fires and I thought, wow of all the jobs, why is this one so special?

Then I googled the job:  Fire and tend boilers. Operate, adjust and repair pumps. Oh, yeah work in the bowels of the ship, in a dark hot environment shoveling coal into a boiler (OK, the WWII cruiser didn’t use coal); but I think that’s my definition of Hell.

I remember my Dad talking about what a crappy job working in the engine room was and how he was happy to be in the signal area where you might get shot by a ‘nip zero’ but at least you could breathe!

So congratulations to all the firemen of the Boston, your promotions were well deserved!

Database update: I have 1,774 individual records with data, and I have 618 names without data.

Bill

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The Hard Way

April 3, 2010

Dear Dad,

Five years ago today, a few minutes before 2 am Pacific Time, you died just the way you lived — The Hard Way.   Admitted to the hospital around 6 am on April Fool’s Day, you were in a coma.   You faced death just the way you wanted to — unplugged; no respirator; no life support.   The doctors said you’d live for a couple of hours. You hung on, minute by slow minute for twenty-four hours.   Then you hung on for another twelve. Then, for good measure, you beat Death for eight more hours.   You finally drew your last breath seconds before we changed the clocks to Daylight Savings Time — effectively wrangling another hour from the Reaper.   The Hard Way.

I don’t know for sure how you were with my brothers or my sister as we grew up.   But with me, everything you and I did was The Hard Way. You and I both know what I’m talking about.

You didn’t tell me about your “Navy Days” or your grueling experiences aboard the Boston. You should have.   I didn’t ask. I should have. I had to find out on my own, the hard way.   I started doing some research a couple of months before you died.   Right after your funeral, I started in earnest. Then I started writing A Bird’s Eye View. My original intention was to write an account of your service for my three sons. Guess what, Dad?   When I finally started writing my book, within six months I lost you; the company I worked for was bought out. I lost my job. Oh, and after thirty years of marriage, I got divorced.   And there was that lawsuit thing . . . Rough six months.   But I bore down and wrote through all that turmoil.   Sound familiar?   The Hard Way.

Oh, I meant to tell you . . . some sons and daughters and grandchildren of your crewmates have stumbled onto my book and this website. They’re sending me pictures and documents and such so that their dads can be remembered too. A couple of your crewmates have read it also. They told me they cried.   They told me I did a good job telling it just like they remembered.   Not so many of them left, it looks like.

I think you’d be proud, Dad.   I say “I think”, because you’d never come out and say that. That’d be The Easy Way.   You’d make me try figure it out for myself   –   The Hard Way.

Steve

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Crew Lists

At the end of the month, I’m planning a trip to the National Archives outside of Washington D.C. to research more information about the USS BOSTON. The archives have the original deck logs, war diaries, photographs, etc. from the USS BOSTON. The preparation has been a little daunting since in researching this topic, you find out that a deck log is a very large piece of paper that can have 4 pages on a boring day and 120 pages on an exciting decklog day. The USS Boston in World War II (CA-69) has six bound volumes that are 11 inches by 10 inches.

In addition, the archives houses war diaries, and muster rolls (who has on the ship) have been declassified are available on microfiche. One startling fact Steve and I came across from looking at the BEANPOT was in the first year at sea, 1/3 of the crew of the BOSTON was reassigned to other ships, often at liberty spots like Ulithi Atoll in the Pacific. The crew list we currently have is from one place in time which is just shy of 1600 sailors (I haven’t yet added the Officers). So if the turnover was constant we’ll exceed 2,500 sailors.

I’ll update everyone on my DC adventure…

Bill