The Military Personnel Records Center (NPRC-MPR) is a branch of the National Personnel Records Center and is the repository of over 56 million military personnel records and medical records pertaining to retired, discharged, and deceased veterans of the U.S. armed forces.
Its facility is located at 1 Archives Drive in Spanish Lake,[1] a census-designated place in St. Louis County, Missouri,[2] near the City of St. Louis. Its former location was in Overland.[3][4]
The new Archival Records became open to unlimited access by the general public with all requests for information to such records responded by providing a copy of the entire file. Those seeking these records were required to pay a fee, whereas the "Non-Archival Records", that is, the bulk of MPRC's holdings, are provided free of charge. As part of the Archival Records program, a number of notable persons' records were also transferred to the custody of the National Archives and open to general public access.[5]
The Military Personnel Records Center was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, and opened in the fall of 1955 after three years of construction. The building was originally known as the "Department of Defense Military Personnel Records Center" and was designated as a joint military command housing three separate records centers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.[6]
Air Force records were considered under the Department of the Army custody at the time of MPRC's opening and were stored at various facilities until July 1, 1956 when the Air Force took custody of its records and moved them to the Air Force Records Center in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1957, the records were then transferred to MPRC in St. Louis. United States Marine Corps records had previously been transferred to the center, under Navy auspices, in 1957. Coast Guard records began to be received in 1958.[7]
On July 1, 1960, the Military Personnel Records Center ceased to be operated by the Defense Department with control transferred to the General Services Administration. The three active duty military records centers, on site at MPRC (the Air Force Records Center, the Naval Records Management Center and the Army Records Center), were disestablished and consolidated into a single civil service operated records center. The center was then designated as under the administration of the National Archives and Records Service (NARS), itself part of the GSA. In 1966, the military personnel records center merged administratively (but not physically) with the St. Louis Federal Records Center (later known as the Civilian Personnel Records Center or CPR) and became part of the National Personnel Records Center. The building became then known as the "National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records" (NPRC-MPR)[8]
In 1965, when photocopy machines became widespread at the Military Personnel Records Center, it became easier to reproduce service records upon request from all interested parties. Even so, between 1965 and 1973 the Military Personnel Records Center gradually became overwhelmed with the volume of records requests it was receiving and developed a bad reputation as being non-customer friendly, with an average wait time of between 11 and 16 weeks for record responses.[9]
Until 1996, the Military Personnel Records Center operated through a complex system of paperwork forms with little computer automation. The 1980s saw serious complaints against the facility to the extent that the military service departments began procedures to hold their own records rather than have such records sent to the Military Personnel Records Center.[10]
Beginning in 2015, the designation "Military Personnel Records Center" was dropped from most official correspondence, with the military records building in Spanish Lake thereafter referred to as the "National Personnel Records Center". Likewise, the civilian records counterpart was renamed from the Civilian Personnel Records Center to the "NPRC Annex". The term "National Personnel Records Center" may now refer to both the physical military records building in Spanish Lake, as well as an overall term for the National Archives federal records complexes located in St. Louis.[11]
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Main article: National Personnel Records Center fire |
In the fall of 2004, an Internet hoax stated that the Military Personnel Records Center was destroying paper copies of all records in lieu of computer scanning.[12] National Archives officials stressed that all records are permanently archived, meaning that they will never be destroyed and always maintained as historical documents.[13] Despite this statement, veterans began contacting the records center in large numbers, asking to be sent their original paper records once they had been scanned. Originally, the records center staff responded by providing record copies which in turn caused more confusion since veterans believed their records were being destroyed and wanted to obtain the original documents. NPRC then enacted a policy where veterans would be contacted by phone, explained that their records were not being destroyed, and asked if they still desired copies. This same statement was reiterated across public Internet notices. As of 2006, following a significant backlog rise in record requests, the requests resulting from the "record destruction rumor" had mostly been dealt with by the Military Personnel Records Center.[14]
In 2014, two employees of the Military Personnel Records Center were discovered to have unlawfully disposed or destroyed over eighteen hundred documents by either abandoning them in lesser used areas of the MPR facility, removing the documents and then destroying them off site, or abandoning the records in a wooded area in western Illinois. The two employees were later charged and convicted of destruction of government records; an investigation revealed the majority of the documents had been administrative "interfile" material into military personnel records, most of which pertained to deceased veterans, thus the breach to veteran privacy was considered minimal.[15]
After questions from Senator Claire McCaskill, the National Personnel Records Center conducted a further investigation and revealed that an additional ten employees had most likely been involved with the improper disposal of records, with enough evidence from an audit to recommend that five of the employees be dismissed from their posts. The motivation behind the mishandling and disposal of records was found to be a "bonus system" in which employees who had interfiled documents more quickly into service records were presented with a monetary paycheck award. The bonus system was thereafter discontinued and an interfile audit program was initiated.[16]
