Is there a list of purple heart winners from WWII?

We do not know of any comprehensive list of Purple Heart recipients for World War II.

Information regarding his award might be found in his personnel file. If you have not already done so, we suggest you request his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF) from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. You may submit a request online on our Military Service Records website. Please specify in the request that you are searching for a Purple Heart award, and if an award card is located, they will include a copy.

If his personnel file lists the unit, the general order number and date for the award, you can e-mail the Textual Reference Archives II Branch at archives2reference@nara.gov and request a search for the general order. 

Without that information, locating a Purple Heart can be difficult to impossible. We do not have a name index to our World War II unit records, and a Purple Heart may have been awarded by the soldier’s unit, a higher echelon unit, or even a medical unit that treated the soldier.

Thank you for sharing your question and best of luck with your research.

This post was written by Megan Dwyre with contributions from Cara Moore.