There will be times when you are trying to tell the story of an airman and his crew when you will want to locate present day members of their families for whatever information they can provide. Many sources are available to you including commercial genealogical services, the Social Security Death Index (available on several different websites), and telephone lookup services. US Census records may be another valuable source, especially the 1940 Census, which will become available to the public in 2012. First, I am listing the blog for On-Line Public Access to the National Archives and Records Administration, then the website for the 1940 US Census.
ON-LINE PUBLIC ACCESS
For information on on-line public access to the U.S. Census records, see http://www.archives.gov/research/search/ and http://blogs.archives.gov/online-public-access/?p=4740.
1940 U.S. CENSUS
The 1940 U.S. Census will be released on April 2, 2012. Unlike previous censuses, the 1940 Census will be in digital form. For further information from the National Archives, see http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/general-info.html
Another source that might be helpful is the utility “How to Access the 1940 Census in One Step” at http://stevemorse.org/census/quiz.php. And yet another source is https://familysearch.org/1940census/.
1940 Census Indexing
It was reported in the January-March 2012 issue (p. 120) of Der Blumenbaum, of the Sacramento German Genealogical Society, as follows:
“Three genealogy organizations, Archives.com, Family Search International, and findmypast.com, have joined forces to quickly publish a searchable, high-quality name index of the 1940 US Census after it is released in April 2012 by the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA).
“The project will have support from other organizations, like the Federation of Genealogical Societies, National Genealogical Society, and Ohio Genealogical Society. It will allow anyone to search the record collection by name for free online.
“The index will allow the public to easily search every person found in the census and view digital images of the original census pages.
“The collection will be available online for fee to the public at Archives.com, FamilySearch.org, and findmypast.com–sponsors of the community project.”
WWII Netherlands Escape Lines 