POW/MIA Information Request

[ACarey]

I assume the U.S. military debriefed American POWs after their release. I'm looking for information on USN aircrews reported as POWs in all areas of the Pacific Theater and those executed by the Japanese. Shouldn't there be such documentation concerning aircrews captured by the Japanese? If so, is there some type of source guide to such documents. Thanks in advance.

[Pathfinder]

NARA has a database for POWs online.

http://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-sea ... GP24&bc=,s

You can detail searches by service, date, name and location. Camp data is also given--but usually shows only one camp even if a person was at several. This is not a perfect archive, but is a good starting point. The originals of this information was IBM cards which were optically scanned. Some misread characters will throw you curveballs. Some information was so garbled that the card was just rejected in the scanning. So like the other NARA databases this might be up to 85% complete. Accuracy is a matter for the conscientious researcher.

There is a notation for died while escaping or in captivity.

Good Luck.

[ACarey]

Thank you