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Sixteen million men and women served in the Armed Forces of the United States in World War II, at home, at sea and on battlefields from North Africa, Italy, France and Germany to Burma, China, the islands of the Pacific and the skies over Japan. They were ordinary Americans, called from every walk of life to resist and ultimately vanquish the most powerful armed forces ever raised on earth. 405,399 died in the service of the nation and the cause.
The Sons & Daughters of World War II Veterans preserves their legacy and offers their descendants the opportunity to establish genealogically consistent proof of descent from a qualifying veteran. The service of a family member in the greatest of all struggles for freedom and a secure future is a landmark in the story of any American family.
Purposes:
- To allow individuals to prove family ancestry and lineage from an American Veteran of World War II
- To perpetuate the story of the sacrifices and achievements of the generation of Americans that fought and won World War II
- To create a public database of military records from individual World War II Veterans accessible to future historians, authors and students researching the legacy of WWII.
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Today all freedom-loving peoples
of the world rejoice in the victory
and feel pride in the accomplishments
of our combined forces. We also pay
tribute to those who defended
our freedom at the cost of their lives.
- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz
on the occasion of Japan’s surrender,
September 2,1945
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At the end of World War II, the United States and all the Allied Nations issued Victory Medals to those who had served in the great cause. Stamped upon those medals were the words, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, freedom from fear. The four freedoms defined the issues at stake for the nations and peoples of the world, as outlined in President Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address January 6, 1941:
 “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression...
everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way...
everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want…
everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear…
anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
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