WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans who served in World War II or supported the war effort at home can now add their names to an online registry.

Organized by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Web-based list is an effort to extend recognition to as many as 16 million Americans who served in uniform during the Second World War. It is being launched almost a year before the dedication of the first national monument to World War II veterans, slated for May 29, 2004 – Memorial Day weekend – on the National Mall.

The registry is open not only to veterans, but to “any American that served in the armed forces or contributed to the war effort on the home front, whether in factories and shipyards or farms and neighborhoods,” the commission said in a news release.

The registry is accessible on the National World War II Memorial Web site, http://www.WWIImemorial.com, or by calling the commission toll-free at 1-800-639-4WW2. Anyone can submit names and registration is free.

Previous efforts to gather names for the registry “barely scratched the surface,” collecting only 1.3 million names over the past several years, said Mike Conley, a spokesman for the commission.

Of those, nearly 700,000 names were submitted by the public. The rest were culled from public records, including casualties listed by the National Archives and Records Administration and the commission’s own lists of veterans buried in its overseas cemeteries or included on its Tablets of the Missing.

“We’re making the registry available now, prior to the dedication, to encourage more enrollments,” Conley said.

President Clinton authorized the memorial in 1993. Construction on the site, opposite the Reflecting Pool from the Lincoln Memorial, began in September 2001. When complete, the memorial will consist of a plaza and a pool bordered by granite pillars and 24 bronze bas-relief panels with scenes from America during the war.

Unlike the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the World War II memorial will not bear any veterans’ names. More than 400,000 Americans died in World War II.

, more than six times the number of veterans whose names appear on the Vietnam memorial.

—

On the Net:

National World War II Memorial: http://www.WWIImemorial.com

AP-ES-07-03-03 1952EDT