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Finding who is in military issued photos

Finding who is in military issued photos

Posted: 7 Jul 2015 2:19AM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 7 Jul 2015 12:49PM GMT
I have a bunch of military photos that were found in my grandmothers things, there are numbers on the bottom, I talked to someone in the military and they thought if I contacted HR for the military I could get names for the people in the photos. Does anyone know if that is possible, I do know that most of the photos look like they are on a ship, in one photo there is the golden gate bridge in the background. The possible branch of military does look like navy, but according to other family members my grandmother knew no one in the navy, only men in the marines and army, which family members have ruled out those men are not in the photos, with that being said does anyone know how I can get the info to who is in these photos?

Re: Finding who is in military issued photos

Posted: 7 Jul 2015 9:27AM GMT
Classification: Query
You might start by posting the pictures and seeing if anyone can identify the uniforms and the era and the numbers, if the numbers turned out to be service numbers that would be your best clue.

Re: Finding who is in military issued photos

Posted: 7 Jul 2015 4:48PM GMT
Classification: Query
I have the photos on facebook here is the album link
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153516112787069&...

Re: Finding who is in military issued photos

Posted: 7 Jul 2015 8:31PM GMT
Classification: Military
Edited: 7 Jul 2015 9:44PM GMT
The man kneeling immediately to our left of the vertical pipe in this picture, is wearing a dark coloured star emblem at the top of his left sleeve, the colour shade is consistent with the star being dark red.

U.S. Army 6th Infantry Division.

They are wearing khaki garrison caps which have coloured piping around the top edges of the cap.

Similar caps were in use by the army in WW1 but after WW1 they soon fell out of use, except in the Army Air Corps.

They were reintroduced in 1939 and that version was edged with different coloured piping for the different branches of service,...infantry, artillery, engineers, and so on.

Infantry was light blue, artillery was scarlet.

The edging on the caps of the man in the middle and the two men on our left, look quite dark, so I'm guesstimating that they are artillerymen, and although the unit was called an infantry division, it did have other non infantry components within it.

That coloured edging was discontinued in 1956.

The 6th Division was decactivated in Korea in 1949, it was reformed and served between 1950 and 1956, but it didn't serve overseas during that period.

So the picture is WW2 era, and it's dated between July and August 1943 and they're enroute to Oahu in Hawaii.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Infantry_Division_(United_...)

I've only viewed a few of the pictures at the moment, and I've seen a couple of the numbers that you mentioned, my guess is that because of their quantity and the various viewpoints involved, those pictures were probably taken by an official unit photographer, or perhaps by a Stars and Stripes photographer.

I suspect that the numbers are file reference numbers that the photographer or a unit clerk gave to the pictures, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of them have a stamp on the back which says something like, property of the U.S. Army or the U.S. War Department or some such.

If anyone wants to challenge, add to, or give a different assessment of that picture, they're welcome to.
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What you have there is much more than just a collection of family photos, it's an historically valuable visual slice of American history, and I'm guessing that not many similar collections have survived.

They deserve to be conserved, preserved, documented, and copied to one or more relevant official photographic, and or historic, archives.

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Go here http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.Military.wwii.troopshipvoy...

and throw this information at a guy called ww2connections aka Richard V. Horrell, who posts on that message board, and there's a good chance that he may be able to tell you what ships transported the unit.

They'll probably be called USAT something or other.

USAT = U.S. Army Transport ship.

Post an enquiry message, and he will see it, include the URL of this message thread.

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http://tinyurl.com/p8e76qb
Attachments:

Re: Finding who is in military issued photos

Posted: 8 Jul 2015 12:30AM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 8 Jul 2015 1:14AM GMT
Ancestry must be on the blink again, as per usual. The edit symbol has disappeared, so I can't insert this into the previous message, so I'll add it here.

I forgot to mention, if you can view a larger version of any of your pics, the collar badges on an their shirt or tunic will tell you what branch of service a man was in.

That's those circular brass discs on their collars, the one on their right is the letters U.S. the one on their left is the branch of service insignia, infantry is two crossed rifles, artillery is two crossed cannon barrels, engineers is a castle.

Identifying any individuals in such pictures is a real long shot, the only way I can imagine to achieve that is if there are any formal unit group pictures that were taken at the end of their training or before they shipped out, sometimes such pictures contain the names of the people in the pictures.

I'm sure that it's obvious that the white ship with the windows is one of the San Francisco Bay Ferries and the island of course is Alcatraz.

Some of the pictures were obviously taken on a ferry, but most of them would be on a troopship, it's probably a civilian vessel rather than a USAT because of the funnel bands, with a bit of effort it would probably be possible to identify the shipping line by the ship's funnel markings.

A whole WW2 U.S. Army Division would be about 15,000 men plus a lot of vehicles and artillery guns, and lots of equipment and stores, a whole Division certainly wouldn't fir into one ship.

My guesstimate is that all of those men are from one of the sub units within the Division, possibly one of the artillery regiments.

Some of the people in the pictures are wearing white peaked caps, they are ship's officers.
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