After World War II, fallen American service personnel rode the rails to their resting places
ON THE CALENDAR, World War II ended with Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945.
For millions of American military personnel who made it through the hostilities, the duration dragged on into 1946. However, for the families of more than 279,000 Americans who died overseas, the war continued until loved ones reached their final resting places. Often this was through a U.S. Army program repatriating deceased servicemen and women aboard mortuary trains that in their day were front-page news but now are forgotten. The Army dispatched the first rail cars in this unique troop movement at Oakland, California, on October 13, 1947, attaching U.S. Army Transportation Corps mortuary cars to civilian passenger trains bound for five of 15 distribution centers serving the continental United States. For four years in that pre-television era, mortuary cars, sometimes making up an entire train, reminded Americans of the price that their compatriots had paid to maintain freedom.
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