July 10, 2026 correction: HQMC has now released the original casualty card. It confirms Ronald Marvin Haynes, service number 555802, as the Hastings-area Marine. The card front gives a casualty date of February 27, 1945; its continuation says a later report recorded combat fatigue on February 26. The visible wound field is blank, so this card does not prove the separate Purple Heart claim. Read the new findings or the updated project page.
The June research snapshot
On June 18, a third-party casualty-card transcription surfaced Ronald Marvin Haynes, service number 555802, with a February 27, 1945 date and a 26th Marines / 5th Marine Division unit frame. A linked profile also listed a Purple Heart for the same date.
The identity match was promising because the obituary names the Hastings-area veteran as Ronald M. “John” Haynes. At that point, however, neither the original card nor an official award record had been obtained, so the page kept the identity, unit, and award claims open.
That caution led to the successful HQMC request. The July release confirmed the identity and casualty-card event, but it also showed why the award and exact-unit questions should not have been promoted from the third-party transcription alone: the visible wound field is blank, and the card's Company B / 3rd Battalion pairing still needs muster-roll reconciliation.