I am looking for records of the Decorations Committee (Committee on Awards and Decorations?) of the War Department during 1937-1941, but especially during the time frame 1 Jan 1940 and 1 June 1941.  Suggestions on where to look?

Dear Mr. Burnett,

Thank you for sharing your question with the History Hub.

The information you are looking for may be part of the series Central Decimal Correspondence Files, 1940-1945 from National Archives Record Group 407: Records of the Adjutant General’s Office. One of the subseries contains “information about awards of decorations and medals (file 200.6),” and another series in RG 407 that may be useful is Approved and Disapproved Applications for Decorations and Awards, 1905-1951.  

You might also be able to find some relevant information in the Records of the Personnel Division (G-1) in Record Group 165: Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs.

These records are all in the custody of the Textual Reference Branch at the National Archives in College Park, MD (Archives II). You can email them directly at archives2reference@nara.gov with questions.

Thank you, again, for posting your question to the History Hub, and best of luck with your ongoing research.

Dear Mr. Burnett,

We were happy to assist you with the requests you submitted to our office. We hope you received our response for each request you sent. Below please find a summary of our search:

We searched multiple correspondence series found in Records of the Adjutant

General’s Office, 1917- (Record Group 407) specifically Entries UD 16, PI-17 37-I, and PI-17 37-G.

We also searched RG 407 Entry NM-3 363-A, Central Decimal Correspondence Files under war department decimal 200.6 (awards of decorations and medals) (same series Rachael mentions above). This decimal is covered in boxes 421-464. Boxes 421 – 447 are arranged by date covering the period 1945 in box 421 through 1941 in box 447. The records for 1941 in box 447 are primarily legislation. Boxes 447-464 of the series are arranged by specific awards and then date. Medal of Honor recipients are found in boxes 459-460.

We searched RG 407 Entry NM-3 416, Approved and Disapproved Applications for Decorations and Awards, 1905-1951, which is is arranged alphabetically.

In addition to this we also searched Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs (Record Group 165) and Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (Record Group 218).

We were not able to locate records for George Keene within these files. We also checked the records for the Distinguished Service Cross which your letter states was awarded to George Keene. The file for the Distinguished Service Cross covers January 1940 – December 1943 and is found in box 452 but there are only records for 1943 and later. We were not able to locate records for George Keene within these files either.

We also recommended contacting the MacArthur Memorial library and archives: (http://www.macarthurmemorial.org/31/Library-Archives).

At this point, your inquiry will require deeper research, which we are unfortunately not staffed to do. We will be pleased to make the finding aids to these records available to you or your representative in our research room at the National Archives in College Park, MD.  The Textual Reference Archives II Branch (RDT2) is located at 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, near the University of Maryland--College Park campus.

Otherwise, you may hire a private researcher to do research for you. A list of private researchers who are familiar with National Archives facilities is available on our web site at http://www.archives.gov/research/hire-help/index.html. We hope you find this information useful.