ROLAND J. HULSLANDER - MILITARY INFORMATION

Ok, so I have been focusing a lot of my research on dads biological father, Roland J. Hulslander.  I'm interested in learning more about him and in the process, hope to find some pictures of him to share with dad and the rest of us.  Let me just say this, the Internet is an amazing tool.  During my research I found a portion of his military record, see below. 

It's a Biography of his time in the Marine Corps.  Although it is very limited, it did open up my research. With the knowledge of which company he was with while in the Corps, the Able Company, I was able to focus a bit on that.  Well, I found the greatest BLOG of a man who does nothing but research the Able Company.  His name is Geoff, and he is a super nice guy.  I wanted to see if he could help me in my quest of knowledge about Roland, so I sent him an email asking for his help and/or any suggestions he may have to lead me in the right direction.  WOW!!!  Not only did he respond but he was able to give me some interesting information about Roland and places to contact for further information.  It is a fairly long response, but I wanted to add it to this post for all of you to read.

Here it is:

Hello, Jill! Thank you for your email!Let me see what I can help you with.

The only service information I have on Private Roland Hulslander is basically what you read on my website. Based on some searching on ancestry.com, it looks like he was born in 1916, near Elmira, New York, and died in 1966. He was married to a woman named Adeline or Adelaide during the war; he listed his home address as 812 Otis Place, North West, District of Columbia. Looks like he remarried in 1952 to Mildred Faye Hoffman (she died in 2005).

Unfortunately, my records for the company are sparse between August 1944 and February 1945. I can tell you that Roland was probably part of a large draft of replacements assigned to the 24th Marines (part of the Fourth Marine Division) and likely joined at Camp Maui in September or October of 1944. His machine gun platoon would have been made up of about fifty percent new men, with the more experienced older hands leading squads and sections. (Older in the sense of battles fought; Roland was old for an enlisted Marine, most of his comrades would have been in their late teens or very early twenties.)

As for the nature of his wound, his company was pulled back into reserve the night before, so he might have been hit by a random artillery or mortar strike, or by a bypassed Japanese sniper. The company got clobbered in an assault the day before (23 casualties, including the commanding officer killed). It's a dead certainty that Roland was in heavy combat before being hit, and probably would have considered himself lucky - the company lost 148 of about 250 marines during the battle!

My recommendations for furthering your research are these:

1). Contact the USMC History Division at Quantico. Their website is here: http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/
Since Roland was wounded, they will have a record of certain aspects of his service, such as his service number, date and nature of his wound, next of kin information, etcetera. They have fairly stringent requirements as to whom they will release information to, but the staff there is wonderfully helpful and tries their best to honor individual requests. They're your best bet.

2). As for pictures, I'm sorry to say that there's a very good chance that you might never find one of Roland himself. Once overseas, Marines were forbidden to own cameras, and while some ignored this rule, they were in the minority. Any personal photographs with Roland in them would probably have been in his possession when he died, and at best would have been passed down through his family. If you go to the main site, you can view some pictures of the company before Roland joined; he probably knew some of the men in them, since most of my pictures come from the machine gunners (my ancestor was commander of the weapons platoon before his death on Saipan), but unfortunately I do not know of any existing photos of Roland in the service. I will keep my eyes and ears open and let you know if I come across anything, but please know that it would be a long shot. However, we can hope!

3). You might be interested in general histories of the Iwo Jima campaign that will give you an idea of the hardships that Roland faced. Bill Ross' "Iwo Jima" is a classic history; John Shivley wrote an account called "The Last Lieutenant" about a platoon leader in the same regiment as Roland; Larry Smith's "Iwo Jima" contains interviews with veterans, including several from Roland's battalion; Henry Berry's "Semper Fi Mac" contains and interview with Irving Schechter, the commanding officer of Able Company; and Eric Hammel has been publishing a phenomenal collection of photographic histories of the Marines which you may find interesting.

I hope this helps! Please let me know at webmaster@ablecompany24.com

- geoff

I was so very thankful for all his help, I merely stated crying.  His perspective and knowledge just made it so much more "real".  I don't know, it's strange, I feel such a connection to Roland, who is a complete stranger to me.  I guess though, through the research and the piecing together of information, it's giving me the ability to learn so much about this man. It's crazy, I know.  Anyhow, here is his link if you want to check it out, he has done a fabulous job in his research of the Able Company, I read his blog for hours and learned so much.  Here it is: http://ablecompany24.blogspot.com/.  I have also added this information under the Research Links. 

Anyhow, I am also adding the Wikipedia link and the link to the The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia for the Battle of Tinian.  This will help you understand the intensity of the battle and what our grandfather, Roland faced during his time there.  Both are fascinating to read.  I will also add them to the Research Links on the right hand side of the blog.  Here they are:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tinian , http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/T/i/Tinian.htm

Stay tuned, for there is LOTS more information to come.