Muster Rolls

The following Muster Rolls contain the name of Bernard John Holmquist, who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in Chicago, Illinois in 1944, trained in South Carolina and North Carolina, shipped to the island of Guam, shipped to and fought on the island of Okinawa, and finally shipped to Tsingtao, China before returning to the United States.

When overseas his mailing address was "C/O Fpo, San Francisco, California". C/O is "care of". Letters and packages for marines and other military personnel were forwarded to 1000 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. At this location 500 Marine men and women under the supervision of the U.S. Navy and part of the Fleet Post Office sorted the mail and forwarded it to on to marines overseas. See the online document United States Fleet Post Office San Francisco, California or here. The sorting and forwarding of mail in the Fleet Post Office in San Francisco was important and necessary for logistic and security reasons. Service personnel were often being moved from place to place. The Fleet Post Office would have, hopefully, the latest information on their location. Also, the military did not want others, including family and friends, to know the exact location of an individual or the location of their unit should that information fall into the hands of the enemy.

The information below is found in the U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1893-1958; (National Archives Microfilm Publication T977, 460 rolls); Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, Record Group 127; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The Table of Contents (part 1 and part 2) of the document that these Muster Rolls for a list of Battalions of the 6th Marine Division of which Bernard Holmquist was a member. (You can skip over the information on the 5th Marine Division of which Bernard was not a member.

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