@Adderall and
@Richard Thank you both for the information, he had contacted NMPRC (I think) and we had contacted the VA. Mistakenly I have always thought they were the same people so I assumed they reconstructed his record.
My question is...is there a way to search the records that are stored for possible matches? Or to get a copy of the original report made by LCdr. S.H. Gray USN to compare to the records to at least narrow down possible matches? Or is all this data protected from general public since these are service members records?
This one really bothers me to think that a sailor, either at his own hand or by someone else's, now rests as in an unknown grave when there might be some way of solving it and giving him his name back.
You ask some good questions. However the answers are always somewhat conditional and situational.
The NMPRC can provide some pretty fast, but selected information when it involves a funeral. The most common document containing information that they can send out is the form DD-214 page which is a summary of service for each individual.
This DD-214 is a form which is typed up upon a person leaving the service and includes all assignments, promotions, qualifications, specialty codes, awards, etc. It is usually required by the Veterans Affairs folks before they will authorize military funeral honors and benefits, such as burial in a military cemetery or a headstone.
Each issuance of such information from an individual's service record is dependent upon the situation and described need.
In a case like this one, if there was some information which would help to narrow down the identity of this young man, and which would support a request, the NMPRC could probably assist. The Privacy Act of 1974 protected an individual's records from being made available to just anyone. A Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request might be required in some cases. However, after a certain amount of time (I have heard it is 62 years), the records do become open for research.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (formerly the Veterans Administration or VA) also has their own records system and index which tracks Veterans Benefits. If a service member/veteran applies for any kind of benefit, such as medical treatment, a home loan, college tuition, survivor benefits, etc. then he/she is given a file number. There is a master index maintained by the VA in Washington DC, and they can tell you what regional VA office holds the record, or where it was archived to. Sometimes this system can help to locate a veteran or his dependents.
The problem here is that this young man would never have applied for any benefits (unless his identity was stolen).
If this sailor had not yet been processed out, he would have been declared a deserter for administrative purposes - if the processing followed proper established procedures. But if he had actually been separated, and was only awaiting transportation home, then his records would have been dutifully forwarded to St. Louis for archival indicating that he had been discharged - and no indication of him being "missing" would exist in his record.
Perhaps the best hope of an identification of this unknown sailor would be for the same unit that is testing the DNA of the USS Oklahoma casualties to obtain his DNA and attempt to locate any relatives to compare it with.
This would require some publication of the case in an attempt to generate interest and information.
