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