The Second World War's dead · the record as the government printed it

1946

The official accounting of this county's Second World War dead exists — in two lists, by two services, and not in any single number: The War Department's World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing Army and Army Air Forces Personnel from Indiana (1946) arranges its dead by county, name, serial number, rank and type of casualty; St. Joseph County's Army list fills parts of three printed pages (pp. 33–35 of the Indiana volume) — killed in action, died of wounds, died non-battle, findings of death and the missing, in one alphabetical county roll. The Navy's companion volume, the State Summary of War Casualties from World War II for Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Personnel from Indiana (1946), carries the sea services' dead separately, arranged by casualty class and name, with next-of-kin addresses — combat deaths and deaths in prison camps, the missing, and the wounded and released prisoners in their own sections.

Between the two volumes stands every St. Joseph County name the government recorded; neither volume prints a county total, and the county's later memorial compilations do not reconcile the two into one official figure in any source consulted. The Army side of that shape is settled by the volume’s own arithmetic: the Honor List’s tabulation by counties gives St. Joseph County 430 Army and Army Air Forces dead and missing — 267 killed in action, 35 died of wounds, 106 died non-battle, 20 findings of death and 2 missing, and the full tabulation stands later in this section. The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard dead stand in the 1946 State Summary; a verified consolidated county total across both volumes is owed by this section’s natural-update cycle, counting the sea services name by name.

The state's own frame gives the scale against which the county's share stands: the Indiana War Memorials' veterans information center records almost 400,000 Hoosiers in service and almost 12,000 Hoosier dead — the county that held Indiana's fourth-largest city carried a share of both in proportion to its 167,000 people, and its exact figure waits on the count, not on an estimate.

Sources:

1. War Department, Adjutant General's Office, World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing Army and Army Air Forces Personnel from Indiana (1946; National Archives Identifier 305290) — the county arrangement and the St. Joseph County pages (33–35) as catalogued by the National Archives.
2. Department of the Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel, State Summary of War Casualties from World War II for Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Personnel from Indiana (1946; National Archives Identifier 305199) — its sections and arrangement as catalogued.
3. Indiana War Memorials, World War II Veterans Information Center (in.gov) — the state frame: almost 400,000 Hoosiers served; almost 12,000 Hoosier dead; 11,680 names of Hoosiers killed in action in the memorial's database.