Alden Potter Thatcher Jr. is a United States Navy sailor who went missing in action. He is one of two US servicemen who are unaccounted for in New Zealand.
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Alden Thatcher Jr. enlisted into the United States Navy from New Bedford, Massachusetts, his service number being 2021012. He was a Seaman First Class and assigned to the USS American Legion APA-17.
On June 20, 1943, the USS American Legion was conducting a training exercise at Paekakariki, New Zealand when a landing craft accidentally capsized in a heavy surf. Thatcher went missing in the chaos, but he is believed to have been killed in the accident. Nine other men, one officer and eight enlisted, were also killed, but their bodies were recovered. As wartime censorship prevented newspapers from publicizing the American presence in New Zealand, the accident remained a secret until decades later.
Thatcher was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and he is memorialized in Court 2 of the Courts of Missing of the Honolulu Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii. He remains among the 72,000 Americans who remains unaccounted for during World War II.