Information to assist in searching the NARA AAD Web Site

NARA revised this site in December 2005 and made it much easier to use. You do not have to complete every box of the entry screen. If you know the person's SERIAL NUMBER, that will be enough to locate the record.

NOTE: U.S. Army officer's serial numbers actually begin with the capital letter "O" followed by a hyphen and up to six numerals. When you enter an officer's serial number in this form, replace the "-" with the symbol "&". If the serial number has less than six numerals, insert the numeral "0" after the "&" symbol as necessary to make the entry the correct length. For example, my father's serial number was "O-16222" - to locate his record, I must enter "O&016222" in the SERIAL NUMBER field.

If you do not know the serial number, just enter the person's NAME and the "DETAINING POWER." It is always a good idea to enter the DETAINING POWER code (2 for Japan) so that you do not get records for people held as a POW in other parts of the world.
Caution: When entering a person's name, write the last name, first name & middle name/initial - without any commas or other punctuation marks. For example, the name "Harry G. Wilson" must be entered as "Wilson Harry G" (without the quotation marks). Be careful about entering too much of a person's name.  If you enter "Wilson Harry George" and NARA has his name on the database as "Wilson Harry" or "Wilson Harry G" you will not find the record.  The lesson to be learned is - if your first entry fails, do not give up - just use a wider search (provide less data). You may even have to use a different spelling of the name. Some names are spelled incorrectly on the database. Remember that the data come from punched cards that were prepared more than 60 years ago and there are some errors. Just be thankful for the amount of data that is available and the fact that the vast majority of the data is correct.

After you have typed the necessary entries in the data boxes, click on the "Search" button above or below the data.  When you see the name of the correct person on the next page, click on the "View Record" symbol at the left of that line.

This will give you a page with all the information NARA has from the IBM punched card record that was made for this person after the end of World War II.

For explanations of the coded data that appears, click on the bold-typed, underlined captions in the left column.  In the new box that appears, click on the word "View" after "Code List:"  If the next screen has a lot of data explanations, click on "Sort Lo->Hi" to get the data in sequence so you can easily find the code you want.

NOTE: There are many ways to search the Records of World War II Prisoners of War, so try a variety of searches.  For instance, you can view a lists of POWs that died on the Shinyo Maru (655 names), Arisan Maru (1,711 names), on the Oryoku Maru (256 names), between Olongopo and San Fernando, Pampango (21 names), on the Enoura Maru (361 names) or on the Brazil Maru (367 names).  To see these lists, go back to the form for entering data.  Start by clicking on "show more fields" button that you will see at the right above the data entry boxes.  For example; to get a list of POWs that were on the Brazil Maru, you will need to add the REP and POW TRANSPORT SHIPS fields. After those fields have been added to the form, leave the SERIAL NUMBER and NAME fields blank.  Use the "Select from Code List" link for each of these fields to select "B" for REP and "DS" for POW TRANSPORT SHIP.  Then click on the "Search" button to get a list of the 367 POWs that are listed by NARA as having died on the Brazil Maru.

To see the list of POWs that died on the Arisan Maru, enter "OS" in the POW TRANSPORT SHIPS box and be sure that all other boxes are blank when you click on the "Search" button.  To see those that died on the Oryoku Maru enter "DS" for the POW TRANSPORT SHIPS and "O" for the REP.  To see the Enoura Maru list enter "DS" and "E."  To see the Brazil Maru list enter "DS" and "B."  To see the list of those that died between Olongapo and San Fernando enter "DS" and "X."

ADDITIONAL NOTE: There is another database you can search to find enlistment data for U.S. Army Enlisted Men (DOES NOT include officers and does not include other services).  Click on this link
http://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-search.jsp?dt=893&cat=WR26&tf=F&bc=,sl to get the data entry screen for this database. Instructions for use of this database are essentially the same as for the previous database.  Since this database is very large, it will be much easier if you get the person's Army Serial Number and use it to avoid getting a large number of records.