497th Bomb Group (VH), 869th Bomb Squadron

Scott Muselin has set up a page for TSgt Alvin Hart at his Osaka Virtual Cemetery and the considerable amount of information there, including photos and newspaper articles, will not be repeated. There is also a page for his wife Carol M. Hart.

He has a page at Honor States
some of the information there is not correct

Selected pages of Case History 328 are used here.

A recommended starting point for these pages is a five page document titled ' Change in Date of Death ' written by Elizabeth A Ridgway, Investigator. This appears in the second page of Official Documents and she states in a concise manner the steps taken to recover and then identify TSgt Hart. Three other men of the
1st Lt Franklin W Crowe crew are also a part of this document.

Alvin Relvue Hart was born on 17 April 1917 in Texas and died in Osaka Castle, Osaka Kempei Tai Headquarters, in 1945. His official date of death is 15 August 1945 but this may not be the actual date. Elizabeth A Ridgway presents a logical reason for this decision.

However, the Mansell Pacific POW Database lists his date of death by execution as 20 July 1945

Also, TSgt Alvin Relvue Hart's name does not appear in the Yokohama Trial Review T-328.
It is possible that he is one of the unidentified noted throughout these 157 pages.

TSgt Alvin Hart was with the 1st Lt John D Bartlett crew at Pratt AAF Kansas and at that time 2nd Lt Franklin Crowe was Pilot. Below this introduction is one page of Special Order 236 with the Bartlett crew listed. One man was left behind to make room for the Ground Crew Chief.

The crew arrived in Saipan on 20 October 1944 and additional details are
in the 1st Lt Franklin Crowe Crew section.

I do not have his Individual Flight Record to determine how many missions he actually flew. Between them, Capt Bartlett and 1st Lt Crowe flew 22 missions with an additional Scratch and an Abort noted in the 497th Bomb Group Mission Reports.

There are two crew photos in the 1st Lt Franklin Crowe section, both taken with 1st Lt/Captain John Bartlett as Aircraft Commander. The first was taken in Kansas and the second on Saipan December 1944. Documents within this section include one page from Missing Air Crew Report 14593 and the Movement Order issued at Mather AAF 15 October 1944. In comparing the names in these lists you will find that seven men of the original crew were lost.

Details of the steps taken to identify his remains are within his Identification Section while Coming Home contains information concerning his remains being transferred from Yokohama to Burbank California.

The first page of the Official Documents section concerns Battle Casualty Reports and Reports of Death, with corrections as updated information was found.

Carol Hart re-married in June or July 1946 but correspondence to and from her in 1948 continued to have her name stated as Hart. Two of the documents in Coming Home are titled Request for Dispositon of Remains. Carol returned the first one with changes granting TSgt Hart's mother authority for these decisions. However, she did not indicate that her legal name was now Carol M Nelson.

Below is part of a page from the 1937 Glendale High School Yearbook and one of the entries for Alvin Hart is his intention to attend Occidental College, located ~10 miles from where his parents lived. However, he decided to head to Idaho for his college studies and while there met his future wife Carol Marie Hart.

Following Special Order 236 are two pages from Alvin Hart's Enlistment Record. Additional details are at his Find-A-Grave page.

My thanks to the following for their assistance with this page:

Dr John D Bartlett, MD
( Captain MC USN Retired)

Jim Bowman
Scott Muselin
Ed Lawson
Al Schutte
Roy Wall
POW Research Network Japan