Dear Mr. xxxxxx:
Thanks for writing. Sorry for the delay but I’ve had other commitments and I wanted to give you a thorough answer. (Incidentally, the rather irate tone of your email made me wonder at first if this might be a joke – or are you too young to remember the TV show “xxxxxx’s xxxx”? That fictional xxxxxx’s first name turned out to be xxxxxxx not xxxxxx, however.)
I’m delighted you ask about the documentation on John MacArthur’s wartime service, since I spent an inordinate amount of time (and money) trying to make sense of John’s different stories about WW I. Bill Bishop is a different case, and you may be partially right on that one, but back to John first.
After several attempts to find MacArthur’s records in Canada , I was told by the Canadian Genealogy Centre of the Library and Archives Canada that all Royal Flying Corps records are housed at the National Archives in England , regardless of an individual’s nationality or place of training. As you know, I’m sure, the RFC became part of the RAF 1 April 1918. I then hired a researcher in London who specialized in military and historical searches, including at the UK National Archives. After several searches through microfilm records he was finally able to locate John Donald MacArthur in AIR 76/312 RAF officers’ records of service -- home address Oak Park, Illinois, person to be notified of casualty, Telfer, brother --.obviously the right John (though his birth year is off by two years, just as it is in his U.S. Navy records).
I received in the mail from London photo copies of two large ledger pages, headed by John’s name, but containing very little information. MacArthur was listed as being in the 43 Wing of the RFC, “Can 152602.”
In the column “Outgoing Authority,” an entry “Rec’d & Deps (?) O” dated 9-9-18 (9 Sept 18) states “No longer physically fit for Air Service, 4-9-18 (4 Sept. 18).
On the second ledger sheet in the column “Special Qualifications” is the notation “Since joining RFC, flown Curtis [sic] JN 4.” The Curtiss JN 4, as you undoubtedly know, was a trainer. At the bottom of the sheet under “Occupation in Civil Life,” John’s abbreviated U.S. Navy service is listed, along with the claim that he had spent two years at “ Wilson Military Academy ” in Nyack , N.Y. Wilson was a religious boarding school, not a military academy. But then that’s John.
On the other hand, pieces of John’s story jibe with details elsewhere. For instance, the historical website about Canada’s Camp Borden talks about some of the same things John would talk about – the briefness of training, high number of crashes, etc. (
http://www.forceaerienne.forces.gc.ca/16wing/heritage/hist1_e.asp). Of course, though it seems likely, there is no proof that John was stationed at Camp Borden , and my query to the minders of that website was never answered. The Croix de guerre, according to Wikipedia (which I somewhat reluctantly cite as a source) “remains one of the most difficult foreign awards to verify … and rarely [was] entered into a permanent service record.”
“I was real proud of the Royal Flying Corps when it was small and exclusive. After they consolidated with the Royal Naval Air Force it wasn’t so good,” John wrote in a letter in 1970. In fact, the RNAS and the RFC were “amalgamated.” Though some parts of John’s rather wild stories might have grains of truth in them, I carefully distinguished for readers the pieces for which I could actually find official documentation (see endnotes for pages 40 and 41 on page 187).
Now, about Bill Bishop. My information came from the transcript of an interview Bishop’s first cousin Sandy MacArthur had with John Taylor, whom I identify in the Acknowledgments to The Eccentric Billionaire. Said Sandy in the interview, “…when I saw him [Bishop] in Okinawa , he was a frogman in the Army. But I think he was in Special Services and his main role in the Special Services was [as] an actor and they went around and entertained the troops and so forth, but unless anyone gets the idea the Special Services were just in the entertainment business he also went ashore in the invasion of Okinawa two days before any of the troops did and swept all the mines and cleared the beachheads at night. The frogmen were the first men on Okinawa before the invasion and I think they did the same at Normandy .”
Bill Bishop had no children but I recently talked to his sister-in-law. She says she and her husband were visiting Bishop in California when he was drafted and that he had already signed a Hollywood movie contract. It would make sense, then, that he would have been in Special Services, performing in shows for the troops. All that the Motion Picture Academy’s Library had on Bishop’s WWII service was that he was in the Signal Corps (obituary, studio directory), of which Special Services was a division.
However, I just talked to the librarian at the national headquarters of the American Legion who said in the early days (such as the early 1940s) the UDT sometimes trained personnel from the Army as well as from the Navy. The website of the Navy UDT- SEAL Museum confirms this. The book written by the official historians attached to the army on Okinawa might shed some light on what units were on Okinawa “two days ahead” and cleared the beaches. The title is, The War in the Pacific – Okinawa: The Last Battle (LOC 49-4572, 1948), part of the series The United States Army in WW II. Possibly you might wish to continue to research this. Did your contacts (who, you said, had access to records of everyone who received UDT training) find a mention of Bishop?
The definite answer could be in Bishop’s official U.S. Army records, and though I, of course, applied for and eventually received John MacArthur’s U.S. Navy records, it never occurred to me to check Bill Bishop’s Army records. From earlier projects I know this can be exceedingly time consuming and difficult, particularly since there are great bodies of individual Army records from that period which were destroyed in a fire in a St. Louis storage warehouse.
I have recently made contact with another of the MacArthur cousins. He would have been of an age to be impressed by an older cousin’s wartime daring-do, so maybe he will have some memory of this. If I can find the time, I may go ahead and start the procedure to get Bishop’s official Army records. This is interesting, but, alas, I am working against deadlines for new projects.
Yours truly,
Nancy Kriplen
