I just found your May 2013 message, now buried deep within the Armed Guard website message board. My apologies for not spotting it earlier.
You asked if there is any way of getting the passenger manifest from the voyage of SS EXETER in November 1940.
Indeed there is. As I mentioned in my message of January 2010 (!), the information I found was from a search of the subscription website Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com)which I have found invaluable in researching the arrival of passengers and crewmen by ship at certain U.S. ports of entry following a voyage from a foreign port.
I maintain an ongoing subscription to Ancestry.com but I know that the website frequently offers free trial 14-day subscriptions. If there is a current offer you could set up a trial subscription, search for the passenger manifest for the voyage in which you and your parents were aboard EXETER, cancel your subscription and end up paying nothing. Before canceling, you could do additional searches to try to find information about your father's first entry into the U.S. Subscription information is available on Ancestry.com's homepage, http://home.ancestry.com/.
To be a little more specific about the search process, once you have set up a subscription you will log on at the homepage. Using the navigation bar at the top of the page, select "Search" then select "Immigration & Travel" from the drop-down menu. This will take you to a search page at which you would enter (for example) your father's first and last names and an arrival of November 1940. Bingo! Three+ years after having done that search the first time, your father's name popped up first on the list. (You can also use Advanced Search to enter more information or to specify "Match all terms exactly" which cuts down on extraneous hits.) Click on "View Image" and you'll see a copy of the original passenger manifest page on which your family appears, at lines 17-19. Click one page further to see information at the second associated manifest page at the same line numbers. You can enlarge the pages to see information as the default page size may display text at too small a size to read easily. The complete passenger manifest for that voyage is at least seven double pages so there's lots of good stuff to explore. You'll get the hang of it.
Incidentally I did a search for Louis Kohler without specifying an arrival date and got 133 results. By entering other unique information that you probably know (middle name or initial, birth year, birth location, etc.) you might quickly find exactly what you're looking for without examining 133 records.
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard / Merchant Marine website
www.armed-guard.com
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