The Second World War's Army dead: the War Department's own figure is 430

1946

no consolidated county total for the Second World War — served or dead — was ever published in one official figure in the record consulted, and the Wars section prints the dead in the two-list shape the record actually has: the War Department's Honor List of Dead and Missing for the Army and Army Air Forces, where St. Joseph County's names run on pages 33 to 35 of the Indiana volume, and the Navy Department's State Summary of War Casualties for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The settling work named was a name-by-name count of both volumes.

The Army figure, from the volume's own arithmetic:But the Indiana volume answers its own question on its third page. Its "Tabulation by Counties and Types of Casualties" gives the War Department's arithmetic for every county, and the St. Joseph row reads: killed in action 267; died of wounds 35; died of injuries —; died non-battle 106; finding of death 20; missing 2; total 430. The row sums exactly, as does the state line beneath it — 8,131 Indiana soldiers of the Army and Army Air Forces dead or missing in the War Department's accounting. So the Army side of the county's Second World War price is settled at its official figure: 430 men of St. Joseph County, of whom twenty stand on findings of death — the presumptive findings made for men who did not return and were not seen to fall — and two still stood carried as missing when the volume closed in 1946. The composition is the war's usual shape and this county's: barely three in five of the 430 were battle deaths at all, and more than a hundred died non-battle — in training, in accidents, of disease — in an army that took the county's sons to every theater on earth. The names themselves stand on pages 33 to 35 of the volume, in the county's own alphabetical order, for the update cycle's name-by-name transcription; the figure printed here is the Department's, and it is printed as the Department's, not as this history's count.

What remains open, stated plainly: the Navy side of the county's dead — the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard names in the State Summary — is still uncounted. That volume is arranged by name for the whole state, each entry carrying the next-of-kin address, so a county figure is a filter, not a page: the settling pull is the volume read entire with the county's towns as the sieve, and the Archives' images of it meet the same refusal. The printed volume — at the Indiana Archives and Records Administration and the St. Joseph County Public Library — is the named route, and the county's combined Second World War figure, Army and sea services together, waits on it. The served side waits with it: no official consolidated total of the county's servicemen was published, and none is printed here. What has changed is that the larger half of the dead now stands at a hard official number instead of a gap.

Sources:

1. War Department, World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing: Army and Army Air Forces Personnel from Indiana (1946; National Archives Identifier 305290) — the "Tabulation by Counties and Types of Casualties" at p. iii, read from the printed page: St. Joseph County, KIA 267, DOW 35, DOI —, DNB 106, FOD 20, M 2, total 430; state totals 4,856 / 660 / 20 / 2,044 / 511 / 40 / 8,131. The county's name list stands at pp. 33–35 of the same volume.
2. Navy Department, State Summary of War Casualties: Indiana (1946; National Archives Identifier 305199) — the sea-services volume, county figure still uncounted; route named in the entry.