WWII Morning Reports using the NARA Catalog

(Note: this blog post was updated to reflect the use of different browsers when viewing these records.)

WWII Morning Reports up to 1943 are now available on the NARA website and can be located through the NARA Catalog. (More Morning Reports are being added, as I have located ones for 1944, too.) For those wishing to research WWI Morning Reports, I recommend using them on Fold3.

Why search for the Morning Reports?

These organizational records can tell us where all the assigned soldiers were on a specific day, and the activities being done. They tell us when and how soldiers moved from place to place. They show when there were promotions, sick for duty and when they were sent to the hospital. They also show if soldiers were assigned to other organizations for temporary duty, or when they were permanently transferred to another organization. At a minimum, a soldier’s name will appear upon transferring in and transferring out of an organization. Memos may also be tucked into these reports.

For those of us whose Army ancestors’ personnel files burned in the fire in 1973, without leaving enough to be restored through technical means, these records are a key part of the reconstruction process.

Why search for them now?

In this blog post, I will describe how to search for the Morning Reports and download them. The process is not as easy as searching through fully indexed records, which will definitely come soon.

Given that fully indexed records will be easier to search, the question becomes whether or not to wait. For me, there have been some research questions that I have been wanting to answer, and these records hold many of those answers.

Know before you search

Currently Morning Reports up to 1943 (with at least some beyond that date) are available to view and download through the NARA Catalog. That means if the military organization was not formed until after the last year that was loaded to the catalog, you will not find the records. It also means that if your soldier joined an organization after the last year currently in the catalog, you will not see them in the records.

The WWII Morning Reports were filmed by month, then organization. That means you will have to hunt down the group of Morning Reports month-by-month.

As of the writing of this post, the numbering of the images in a set of reports may differ between browsers. The short takeaway is that the Firefox browser shows the images in reverse order, while the Chrome browser shows them in chronological order. For example, Image 992 of 1000 when viewed in the Firefox browser is the same image as Image 9 of 1000 when viewed in the Chrome browser. For more details and conversion see the note at the bottom of the post. (You might expect NARA to make changes in the future.) Just remember that you may have to follow the Prev or Next arrow for navigation through the Reports for the month.

For example, I was searching for Batteries within a Gun Battalion using the Firefox browser, so Btry D will appear before Btry A. When the download the files, you will see the number in the filename decreases.

There is a SPACER image separating reports between organizations, so look for them at the start and end of the month.

Searching for a name

This approach is not recommended. Searching the NARA Catalog can be awkward, and when I did try to search for a name the search results gave no feedback to help identify if a result would be of use to me. Searching these records by name will evolve over time, possibly on another existing genealogical website.   

Searching by military organization

This blog post will focus on searching for the military organization for a soldier.

The website for NARA’s Morning Reports 1912-1946 can be found at: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/85713825

To begin your search, select the “Search within this Series” button, or go to https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/85713825

The search box on the page contains the text “Search within this Series.” This box is where you type your search terms.

Searching option: I found it easier to search the whole catalog. Of course, the effectiveness of this technique will depend on the keywords that are used. You can try it both ways and see which way works better for you! I searched from: https://catalog.archives.gov

I scrolled through the results to scout out what was available.

Since I did not review the result for the Red Wings in 1999, I cannot be sure what how the search terms 500th and AAA connected with the record. Perhaps the result included words about a 500th game or goal, and AAA Hockey teams. Most results seemed more relevant to my goal of finding promising Morning Reports.

NOTE: YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THE SEARCH RESULTS to see the links to the results within the set of images where the search terms are located. (You cannot open in new tab and to see the images with the search results (the organization)! If you were to click to open in a new tab, you would be taken to the first image on the roll, with no navigational clues to get to the morning reports of the organization.

I thought that September 1943 would be interesting, as it was the first full month that the 500th AAA Gun Battalion was stationed in Greenland.

Clicking on this result takes you to the first image on the roll, which is most likely NOT what you are looking for. See the list of links to the search results located on the right.

Since we know that these rolls were filmed backwards, we know that Image 249 is the last image of the Battalion for September 1943. Click on the link: Image # 249.

Image #249 is the last page of September Morning Reports for all of the 500th AAA Bn CAC. It is the last page of the Medical Detachment’s September Morning Reports (Med Det 500th AAA Bn CAC), which is the report for 30 September 1943. Below is a close up of the top of the report.

Keep looking at the Organization field to get to the battery, company or other organization you are seeking.

From the page with the image, you can view and download the image to your computer. The Download button is on the lower left of the document viewing window.

You can also click on Extracted Text to open a window with text that has been extracted from the image, and can be copied. Although a few errors may be present, the quality of recognizing the typewritten characters is good.

I left the Extracted Text window open as I viewed image by image, going backward in the days of September 1943 so that I could collect the text. (I am keeping an Excel Spreadsheet with the image numbers, links and other data.)

At the bottom of the image viewing window, I used the Next button to see the previous Morning Report.

Since I went through the images sequentially, they began with the end of the Medical Detachment and ended with the beginning of the Headquarters and Headquarters Battery. The very last image was the beginning (because they were filmed backward), rewarding me with confirmation of what I knew about the 500th AAA [Gun] Bn parent and its sub units:

VARIATIONS ON SEARCH TERMS:

I did try a variety of search terms, experimenting with spelling out words, using more of the organization’s name, and the specific battery. Some of the results were for other battalions numbered in the 500’s (e.g. 502, 506). Definitely try different combinations of names and abbreviations when searching for military organizations.

What’s next for me

Downloading more of the 500th AAA Gun Battalion’s Morning Reports, searching both backward and forward to learn of their reorganizations. Of course, I will search for when my Father transferred in and out of the organizations to follow his history throughout his time in service.

I will also be trying to see if it might be more straightforward to search for the organization’s Morning Reports other ways.

Let me know how you do.

NOTE: This is a more detailed explanation. For now, when using the Firefox browser, navigation shows the images beginning at 1 displaying the last image of the set, and as the numbers increase the reports go back in time. When navigation through the images using a Chrome browser, image 1 is the beginning of the set of images. To locate the same image across browsers, you would need to reverse the numbering using the total image count.

If you find you need to convert the number of an image viewed in the Firefox browser to the locate the same image in a Chrome browser, you use the total number of images in the set (which is image number found after “of” between the Prev and Next arrows in the image navigation bar), and calculate the image numbers as follows:

Chrome Image # = total number of images in the set – Firefox Image # + 1

Firefox Image # = total number of images in the set – Chrome Image # + 1

New Book: ChatGPT and Learning A Language

If you have read this blog or heard my talks, you probably know that I have incorporated ChatGPT into my workflow. The basic version of ChatGPT supports a lot of the mundane tasks I do, and in the “Crash Course on ChatGPT and…” book series, I am sharing lessons I learned and the prompts that were helpful.

This time, the tasks go beyond genealogy and into learning a new language. ChatGPT has the potential to be immensely helpful when beginning to learn a new language. It can also explain the intricacies of a language to an English-speaking person in an understandable manner. I was excited about what ChatGPT could do to help the process, and wanted to share it in this brief book, “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Learning A Language.” (A softcover book will follow soon!)

Have you ever wanted a private tutor to help you learn a foreign language? Have you wished for lessons that were customized just for you? While nothing can replace being part of a community of people fluent in a language, ChatGPT can tap into its vast knowledge to provide you with a patient and tireless personal tutor- all you have to do is ask. It can even map out an entire course for you to follow. You can learn using the suggested lessons, then have ChatGPT test you with quizzes and puzzles, or converse with you (in text). It can even generate written content in a different language for you to read or translate. The book will get you started with the skills needed in prompt engineering when learning a new language. In the sections of this book, you will learn how to get an account and start using ChatGPT. Then you will find ideas on how to use ChatGPT to learn a language. Last comes suggested prompts that are for you to use to get started. Throughout the book there will be privacy considerations and potential limitations you might face.

The Kindle Edition of “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Learning A Language” is available now on Amazon. A softcover version will be available soon!

Generate Images With A Free ChatGPT Account

Did you know that OpenAI allows users to generate images with a free account? At the time of writing this blog post, ChatGPT allows the use of DALL·E to generate two images per day with a free account.

All you have to do is ask, by typing in the prompt.

CAVEAT: Always research the ownership of any images generated in an AI tool before you consider publishing them.

PROMPT: Create an image of an airplane flying over art deco buildings

ChatGPT spent a little time and created an image.

At the bottom of the image, ChatGPT gave me some suggestions on what I might ask it to do next.

You can hover your mouse over the image to see the icons for giving feedback, or downloading the image as a WEBP file.

In one experiment ChatGPT showed me that it was creating an image, and then pronounced it complete, but there was no image. So I asked: where is it?

ChatGPT proceeded to ensure that this time I received the image. This second try to get the image to me did not count against my two images per day.

I tried another experiment. I generated two images. When ChatGPT told me “Let me know if you’d like to modify or add anything!” after the second image, I was not sure if that would count toward my daily limit of two images.

So I asked ChatGPT to modify the image, and was given that modified image. Then I received this alert:

Converting WEBP to JPG file format

You might be wondering how to convert a WEBP file to another format. The simplest way in Windows 11 is to open the image using the Photos app.

Select “Edit.”

An alert pops up that the Photos app can not save in WEBP format (which is what I wanted), so select Save Options -> Save as copy.

The dialog box that opened offers a choice of formats in which to save the image.

I chose the .jpg extension to save the image in a JPEG format.

Give it a try and let me know how you do!

How A WWII Morning Report Can Solve A Mystery

WWII Military Research can have challenges for many reasons. Of course, the fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) may have burned an army ancestor’s file. Unlike WWI records. Not many of the WWII records are online. This means a little more work is required in identifying which records will help and then traveling to the repositories.

We had known that my father was stationed in Greenland as a soldier during WWII, and that he traveled to Greenland by ship. He spoke very little about WWII, but that was some of the very little that he had shared.

His Report of Separation contains the date that he departed the Continental United States, in Box 36.

Date of Departure: 1 Aug 43

Destination: Greenland

Unlike the WWI ship manifests, the WWII ship manifests are not digitized and indexed. That means to use them you have to take a trip to NARA II in College Park, MD. The problem is that these records are stored by ship name, so you need to know the name of the ship to find the manifest. (In contrast, we can search using a soldier’s name to locate the ship manifests without knowing the ship names upon which our WWI ancestors traveled.)

Timelines are one of my favorite tools in genealogy. Of course, I have been busy building a timeline and gathering information in a binder dedicated to researching my father’s WWII experience. Without the ships’ names, there was some missing data in that timeline.

A while ago, I located a great ebook online, “Troopships Of World War II” by Roland W. Charles at https://www.80thdivision.com/pdfs/wwii_Troopships.pdf

Having that timeline, I had explored this book for candidate ships carrying him to and from Greenland. I had identified potential ships and eliminated many.

The one clue that has been taking me places was a single sheet of paper found in my father’s personal belongings. It commemorated his crossing of the Arctic Circle. This certificate included his name, superior officers’ signatures, and the latitude of the Arctic Circle. Being concerned with operational security during wartime, this certificate had a blank line for the ship name as well as for the longitude where they crossed the circle. The day of August in 1943 was also blank. But there was one clue, his military organization: Btry ‘A’ 500 AAA Gun Bn

Morning Reports are a wonderful resource. Several years ago, I brought my research team with me to NARA St. Louis to view and copy the Morning Reports for the 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment, in which my grandfather served in WWI. The WWI Morning Reports are now online, which makes them very convenient to gather and use. However, the WWII Morning Reports have not been digitized and require a visit or the use of a retrieval service.

Here, at last, was information about my father’s outgoing trip. On 1 August 1943, Battery (Btry) A of the 500th Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion (Bn) of the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps (CAC) was onboard the SS Yarmouth.

Now, I could learn more about the USAT Yarmouth from Engineer Charles’ book.

These facts also tie in with information about Greenland convoys that are posted here: http://www.warcovers.dk/greenland/geen_main.htm

At this point, it was time to slow down and record the collection of evidence that I had. One of the best ways to understand something is to undertake explaining it to others, so I created a document to share with my brother. This document contains the facts I know, so that they can be summarized in a research plan.

We remembered mentions of the outgoing convoy, and now I can investigate them. I will contact NARA to see if I can arrange to view the Yarmouth’s manifests, and perhaps consider looking at the deck logs. Both should be located at College Park, MD.

Researching Civilian Employees of the Federal Government

Researching Civilian Employees of the Federal Government

This blog post is intended to get you started on researching civilians who worked for the Federal Government. Civilian employment also includes records for those who worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) or Works Project Administration (WPA) employment.

NARA has an older publication that has information about their resources researching federal employees: https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/ref-info-papers/rip110.pdf

(To find other NARA informational publications, see our blog post: Finding Helpful NARA Publications)

Although this is one of the older publications, there is a section about civilian employees of the Federal Government beginning on page 30 of this document:

An important thing to know is that personnel records become archival 62 years after the person’s employment by the Federal Government has ended. This 62-year time is calculated on a rolling date. Before 62 years has elapsed, the records are non-archival.

Prior to 62 years after the end of a person’s employment as a civilian employee of the Federal Government, their Official Personnel Folders (OPF) can only be accessed by the employee or an authorized third-party requestor.  During that time, only limited information may be released to the general public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The National Personnel Records Center’s (NPRC) Federal Records Center Program maintains the Official Personnel Folders (OPF) of former Federal civilian employees whose employment ended after 1952.

A starting place to learn who can request records, and how to request them, would be the webpage for Official Personnel Folders (OPF), Federal (non-archival) Holdings and Access: https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/civilian-non-archival

Learn how to access archival Official Personnel Folders (more than 62 years after the civilian employment ended) from: https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/opf

Once you know the agency where the civilian employee worked, look for its current website. In some cases, the name of the agency or its organization within the government may have changed, so investigate the history of the organization. Look for information about projects in which your ancestor had been involved.

Good luck researching your civilian employees of the Federal Government, and let me know how you do!