Issuance of Passport in 1959

On September 4, 1959, while on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, Oswald applied for a passport before a clerk of the superior court at Santa Ana, Calif. On the application Oswald stated that he intended to leave the United States for 4 months on approximately September 21, 1959, by ship from New Orleans, La., and that the purposes of his trip would be to attend the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and the University of Turku in Finland, and to visit Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Finland and Russia as a tourist. With the application, Oswald submitted a statement signed by a Marine officer that he was to be discharged from the Corps on September 10, 1959. The passport, No. 1733242, was routinely issued on September 10, 1959. At the time, the United States proscribed travel to none of the countries named in Oswald’s application.