For the first time in history, it is possible to find a story about everyone of the WWII fallen from a single state -- Utah.
Alphabetically from Tarawa MIA Myron Abbott to B-17 pilot Leslie Zubiri
By age from 54 year old Mervyn Bennion (captain of the battleship West Virginia at Pearl Harbor) to 17 year old Howard Hanson at Iwo Jima
By date from US Naval Academy grad Howard Merrill on December 7, 1941 to POW William Walker on August 30, 1945
From internment camp transplant George Sameshima to pioneer descendant Heber Smith
Now each of them has a story.
This is how it happened.
Just after the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 2016, lifelong history buff Don Milne, began a personal passion project where everyday he wrote a story about one of the US World War II fallen on the 100th anniversary of their birthday. He did this each day on his lunch break and ended up with more than 1,300 stories saved in his WW2Fallen100 blog. These stories had been read more than 1 million times, but he was planning to wrap things up on September 2, 2020. The 75th anniversary of the end of WWII would be a nice date to end this one man tribute to the fallen. His readers wanted him to keep going. However, at one story a day it would take nearly 1,100 years to write a story of everyone of the 400,000+ US WWII fallen. To write more stories, he was going to need help.
In the fall of 2019, after a 29 year career at Zions Bank, Milne’s position at the bank was eliminated. He found himself with the choice of finding a new job in the financial services field, or taking a leap of faith to set up a project to finish what he started - actually tell the stories of ALL the 400,000+ US WWII fallen. With the part time help of his daughter Tatiana Fallon, Milne created the nonprofit initiative Stories Behind the Stars. Its mission was simple - 1) get a story for everyone of the US WWII fallen, and 2) develop a smartphone app so anyone could scan their names from any gravestone or memorial and immediately get a link to read their stories right there on the phone.
To make this happen, he was going to need a list of the fallen and get a whole bunch of help from others to write the stories.
Readers may be surprised to learn that there is no accurate, official national list of the US WWII fallen names. There isn’t even an accurate official count. Milne decided to start with his then home state of Utah. If he could do all the names from one state, that would prove it could be done for any state.
To do all the names from Utah, he had to get the Utah list of fallen, and since no such list existed, he had to create it. Milne was able to get a good start with a list provided by Roy Hemmat of HonorStates.org. HonorStates.org is a project to create a database of US military fallen from World War I through the Vietnam War. He then compared that to the National Archives and Records Administration’s Army and Navy WWII Honor Rolls. Last of all, he added names from the 3 February 1945 issue of the Deseret News that attempted to list all the Utah WWII fallen. In the end, he ended up with a spreadsheet with 2,100 names.
Milne then created training documents and videos showing people how easy it was to research and write obituary length stories. By the summer he was ready to find volunteers to help. Local news stories in the Provo Daily Herald, the Ogden Standard Examiner, KSL.com, Utah Public Radio, and the Extreme Genes podcast, attracted the help he needed. Eventually he attracted 125 volunteers -- most were from Utah, but they also came from 27 other states and even Canada. These volunteers ranged in age from teens to pushing ninety. Many had family who served in World War II, sometimes not coming home. Many have served in the military themselves. Some had decades of genealogical experience. Others were rookies but quick learners.
Lehi based Ancestry.com pitched in by granting Stories Behind the Stars with institutional status like a library. This provided a way for volunteers to access key research sites for free. Ancestry’s Fold3 division, especially created to honor those who served in the military, stepped up to serve as the common database to hold all these stories in online memorials free to access by anyone.
Some of the 125 volunteers contributed one or two stories and moved on. Others did a dozen stories, or two dozen, or three, or even four dozen. The process of starting with nothing more than a name and then doing the detective work to fill in the details proved to be very addicting. Four volunteers contributed between 50 and 100 stories, another four contributed between 101 and 200, and two did more than 200 each. It would take one person nearly three years of 8 hour work days to research and write all of these stories. The Utah pilot project volunteers did it in six months.
You can read twelve favorite stories select by our volunteers here: https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/post/every-single-utah-wwii-fallen-has-a-story-like-these
You can read the reason why many of our volunteers gave up so much of their free time to write these stories here: https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/post/why-every-utah-wwii-fallen-has-a-story
Stories Behind the Stars would like to publicly thank all the volunteers who contributed to the success of this project:
Contributing 201+ stories:
Kim Dixon, Utah
Viki Strong, Utah
Contributing 101-200 stories:
Brianne Ellison, Utah
Randy Hervey, Colorado
John Schlatter, Utah
Susan Singleton, Illinois
Contributing 51-100 stories:
Mike Appleby, Colorado
Pam Baker, Alabama
Teri Fronk, Utah
LuAnn Greenwell, Utah
Contributing 11-50 stories:
JoDene Arakelian, Utah
Lisa Arnold, Texas
Lisa Brocadello Bergeson, Colorado
Molly Brown, Utah
Coby Crump, Utah
Jonathon Floyd, Utah
Amie Gutierrez, Michigan
Debra Holley, Utah
Jay Jones, Utah
John Lannefeld, Utah
Lisa McCole, Missouri
Mary Peterson, Minnesota
Michael Plymale, West Virginia
Jenna Rabtzow, Colorado
Kathe Reber, Utah
Aarica Rice, Colorado
Al Schutte, Ohio
Elizabeth Shaw, South Carolina
Micheline Smith, Utah
Rhonda Steele, Colorado
Valerie Wood, Utah
Ginny Wortz, Indiana
Contributing 1-10 stories:
Angie Abram, Utah
Valerie Auld, Kansas
Aiden Bandiola, Utah
Kristin Barlow, Utah
Melissa Barocio, Utah
Michelle Bates, Oklahoma
Bette Bellefeuille, Idaho
Sheryly Binetti, Utah
Bette Bohman, Utah
Steve Booth, Utah
Tim Bowman, Alabama
Steve Brannan, Alabama
Andy Brockway, Ontario, Canada
Tyler Brownell, Colorado
Anna Burkholder, Utah
Troy Burnett, Utah
Dian Burton, Utah
Kagan Byron, Utah
Sam Carpenter, Utah
Marilyn Clark, Utah
Emily Collins, Wisconsin
Tracy Cook, California
Kim Crump, Utah
Dylan David, Utah
Esther Davis, Utah
Norma DeBrow, Alabama
Dennis Dupras, Alaska
Candice Empey, Texas
Pat Filippone, California
Preston Freitas, Utah
Donna French, Utah
Char Fulfer, Texas
Bryan Fusfield, Colorado
Amanda Greenwood, Utah
Amberlee Hansen, Utah
Judy Hansen, Utah
Amber Hatton, Utah
James Hooper, Texas
Rose Jacklin, Utah
Michelle Kelleher, Alabama
Maxine Keller, Utah
Frank King, Florida
Joanne King, Florida
Mac Kolar, North Carolina
Emily Koresko, Georgia
Von Landon, Utah
Robert Leifson, Utah
Rick Leimbach, Utah
Deborah Lobey, Oregon
Tami Malan, Utah
Karen Marie McNichols, Illinois
Debbie Martin, Utah
Ashley Martinez, Utah
Autumn McFarland, Arizona
Steve McGee, Texas
Jerry McLaughlin, Georgia
Shawn Mecham, Utah
Sabina Morrey, Utah
Peri Muhich, Washington
Kaylene Mulvey, Utah
Marilyn Murphy, Wisconsin
Mark Nelson, Utah
Camille Noel, Utah
Allison Norman, Utah
Brad Olsen, Utah
Marianne Olsen, Utah
Eden Palmer, Illinois
Noelle Parent, Arizona
Lucy Peterson, Utah
Doug Phillips, Oregon
Deborah Pierce, Utah
Hugh Poland, Texas
Staci Porter, Utah
Judy Price, Indiana
Brandon Rhea, Utah
Rebecca Rogers, Utah
Sophia Sahprio, Utah
Beth Sano, Utah
Heather Sather-hansen, Utah
Linda Simpson, Oklahoma
Shauna Skog, Utah
Gary Smith, Colorado
Peggy Smith, North Carolina
Julie Sohlberg, Colorado
Samantha Strong, Utah
Ronalee Summers, Utah
Wendy Vincent, Utah
Linda Welke, rUtah
Alison Wilde, Utah
Marti Wiser, Utah
Tina Yeagley, Utah
Anna Young, Utah
As of this writing there are still 400,000+ stories to go. We welcome anyone to find out how to help.