| Title: |
Records on Military Personnel Who Died, Were Missing in Action or Prisoners of War as a Result of the Vietnam War, created, 1/20/1967 - 12/1998,
documenting the period 6/8/1956 - 1/21/1998 |
| Creator: |
Department of Defense. Washington Headquarters Services. Directorate for Information Operations and Reports. Statistical Information Analysis Division. (ca. 1997 - ) (Most Recent)
|
| Type of Archival Materials: |
Data Files
Textual Records |
| Level of Description: |
Series from Record Group 330: Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense |
| Other Titles: |
Combat Area Casualties Data Base (CACDB)
[Southeast Asia] Combat Area Casualties File (CACF)
[Southeast Asia] Combat Area Casualties Data Base |
| Location: |
Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division (NWME), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 PHONE: 301-837-0470, FAX: 301-837-3681, EMAIL: cer@nara.gov |
| Inclusive Dates: |
1/20/1967 - 12/1998 |
| Coverage Dates: |
6/8/1956 - 1/21/1998 |
| Date Note: |
Although this series was created in 1967, the records in it date back to 1956. |
| Part of: |
Record Group 330: Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense |
| Function and Use: |
The agency created this series as the official repository for records on U.S. military casualties in the Southeast Asian combat areas during the Vietnam War and used the database as the source for official information about U.S. military personnel casualties related to the Vietnam War and for disseminating statistical data concerning them. |
| Scope & Content Note: |
This series contains records of U.S. military officers and soldiers who died as a result of either a hostile or nonhostile occurrence or who were missing in action or prisoners of war in the Southeast Asian combat area during the Vietnam War, including casualties that occurred in Cambodia, China, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Thailand. The records derive from information submitted by each of the military services on Department of Defense Form 1300, Individual Report of Casualty. The database has both final and nonfinal records; a data field in each record distinguishes between them. Final records, also referred to as the "last" records, represent the most current official information about a deceased casualty or about repatriated personnel; nonfinal records, also referred to as "previous" records, are those that precede the final records. Each record includes: the casualty's name, service number, file reference number, date of birth, date of death or repatriation, date Southeast Asian tour began, record processing date, city and state of home of record, the casualty's military service branch, country of casualty, type of casualty, military grade and pay grade, military occupation, service component, race, religion, length of service, marital status, sex, citizenship, the reason or cause of casualty, whether the casualty involved an aircraft, the status of the casualty's body (whether recovered or not), whether the casualty was posthumously promoted, and the South Vietnam province where the casualty occurred, when applicable. |
| Access Restrictions: |
Restricted - Partly. FOIA (b)(6) Personal Information. Records for U.S. military personnel casualties are partly restricted when the casualty type code indicates that the person is not deceased. Such records exist in a majority of the files in the series. Public use versions of the files with restricted records have been created for release to researchers. |
| General Note: |
This series has three separate files: the Current File (final records of the deceased), the Returned Alive File (final records of repatriated personnel), and the History File (nonfinal records for either deceased or repatriated personnel). NARA releases nonfinal or history records when explicitly requested. NARA makes available through the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) system only the final records from the most recent accession of the Returned Alive File and of the Current File.
Agency materials and NARA finding aids may refer to the series by one of several alternative titles. One title, Combat Area Casualties Data Base, is often shortened to the acronym CACDB. NARA also refers to the series as [Southeast Asia] Combat Area Casualties Data Base or [Southeast Asia] Combat Area Casualties File (CACF) to clarify that the records are limited to U.S. military personnel who died or where missing or captured as a result of the conflict in the defined Southeast Asian combat area.
The agency continues to maintain the database and revises casualty records when new information about a casualty is transmitted from one of the military branches. Occasionally this includes adding records for casualties newly deceased or whose casualty had not previously been reported by the casualty's branch of service. Since the creation of the database, the procedures for revising records have changed. For some of the period, the agency added a new and revised record to the database for an individual for whom there was a previous record as a means of documenting the revision of information about the casualty. In these cases, they coded the new record as a last record (or final record) in the data field, Last Record Code, and coded the previous record as a previous or nonfinal record in this data field. Other times the information in the Date Record Processed data field was updated to indicate a revision to an already existing casualty record rather than adding a new record with the revised information. Therefore, in order to preserve full information about changes made to any of the records, NARA is preserving each of the files as a discrete snapshot of the data.
|
| Finding Aid Type: |
Technical Information
|
| Finding Aid Source: |
NARA and Directorate for Information Operations and Reports in the Office of the Secretary of Defense |
| Extent: |
26 data files and 3 inches of paper documentation |
 |
|