Hi John,
You might consider the National Archives or the WWII Memorial Registry. I think there's also a Navy historian, who you might try to contact, or perhaps reach out to the Smithsonian. All have many resources online. Good luck. My grandpa was in the Army in WWII. I tried to get him to talk about it, but he only did once. When I was in 8th grade, he sat me down with a photo album. When he was a teenager, he was into photography and knew how to develop photos. So he would develop photos taken by others in his unit for a penny a print (or whatever it was that he charged them) and had the foresight to develop two copies of each photo, keeping one for himself. So, in addition to all the photos that he took himself, he had this big collection of other photos from the war.
He landed in France about two-weeks after D-Day. Marched through France, spent some time in Antwerp, and ultimately was part of the Battle of the Bulge and the occupation force in Germany when the Allies won. Anyway, back to the photo album--when I was in 8th grade, he sat me and my brother (then in 6th grade) down and showed us those pictures. "You need to see this," he said. There were a good many pictures of him and his buddies. Funny stuff. Young guys enjoying themselves. But there were also a bunch of pictures from when his unit liberated the concentration camps. Vivid stuff. Even now, over 20 years after he showed them to me, I remember those images. The dark stains of blood on the walls of the gas chambers, which were left as people were clawing at the walls trying to get out. The gaunt, bony figures of the individuals who were liberated, starved nearly to death.
I can't imagine what it would have been like to see that in person as an 19-year-old kid the way my grandpa did. That was the one and only time he ever talked about it. He's over 95 years old now, living down in Texas. I've since asked him about his experience in the War, now that I am a little older (and hopefully a little smarter and a little more wise) but he's always brushed off my questions.
Good luck with your research. It's hard to understate what we owe those men and women (can't forget about what happened on the homefront) who sacrificed so much to defeat Nazism and fascism so that we might continue to enjoy the freedoms we do now.
