One of the main problems, which has been outlined in the articles written by myself and Rena McKinzie , is the fact that some of the soldiers that we are in search of may have been registered in an area outside of Santa Monica. This makes it hard for us to go through archives such as:
We only have last name to go by, however we start out by looking up those soldiers who died in Vietnam who enlisted or lived in Santa Monica. After that we look up those that graduated from or attended Santa Monica High School until their date of enlistment.
While it is possible to look up each and every surrounding area around Santa Monica on some websites, and then compare those names with the old school yearbooks, it becomes very tedious. because sometimes we aren't informed of their age at time of death. This means that we are unable to locate what year they would have/ did graduate. This would be easier if the only men going into the war had graduated during those ten years, but it is likely still that men older than 18 also joined the services and fought.
This leads into another problem - age. Some men lied about their date of birth, and thus, again, we don't know what their year of graduation was.
Granted - Vietnam started in 1965 and ended 10 years later in 1975, but this is still a large window for the amount of students going through SAMO, but there are also those who died in Vietnam before the initial war even started - and they too, need to be remembered for their valor.
I hope that this has been helpful, and if you have any suggestions still you may post it on this page or you may e-mail me at merced.morgan@yahoo.com
Thank you.
