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‘It just unlocked this whole family tree’: BYU students help find the living relatives of soldiers missing in action

The personnel file she got from the Army listed only the missing soldier’s name and his brother’s name. A partial immigration record from 1905 noted the little village in Italy where their family lived before resettling in the United States. She searched first for that.

The coastal Sicilian town pulled up millions of responses in a Google search. She narrowed it with their last name. The results didn’t look any better. She added “World War II veteran.” Nothing.

Torres switched her screen to FamilySearch, a genealogical website, and typed in the town again. There was microfilm that she could read at the library with birth, death and marriage records for the village from 1812 to 1915.