Tues, Jul 21, 1942: to the army

“Did you know Eleanor Anne was operated on for appendicitis in June and was home just about a week before Mildred's operation?  She is getting along O.K.  I read one of her letters at Aunt Edith's to-day.  She said Byron was just deferred until July 1st but has heard nothing in regard to his going to the army.  Harold has changed jobs.  He is a fireman at a defense plant of some kind near Decatur.  Richard is still in Wisconsin, Carroll was transferred to Decatur and Ira still works at his job of delivering milk to nearby towns.  Betty is in school at Bloomington Ill. Don't know what she plans to do.”

-- Letter from my grandmother, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Salina, Kans., Tuesday, July 21, 1942. 

This letter, written six months after the U.S. entered World War II, provides a rundown on my fathers’ many cousins living near Decatur, Illinois.  All the men mentioned were in their twenties and of draft age.  As this letter shows, the majority of men of military age were not in combat.  Germany had invaded Poland in September of 1939 and France in May 1940.  In response to these events, the United States began to consider military conscription.  Roosevelt finally endorsed such a proposal in August 1940, in the midst of his second re-election campaign.  Ultimately, his Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, came out for a draft as well.  Roosevelt signed a selective service bill into law on September 16, 1940 – the country’s first-ever peacetime draft.  The September 1940 Selective Service Act required all men ages 21 to 35 to register for twelve months of military service.  By the fall of 1941, the military had gone from 250,000 men to 1.5 million.  With the declaration of war against Japan in December 1941, the term of service was extended through the duration of the conflict.  In November 1942, the draft pool was increased to all men ages 18 to 45.   A variety of professions including ministers, farmers, miners, commercial sailors, railroad workers, and milk deliverers were exempt from conscription.  In all, sixteen million Americans served in the military during World War II.  However, only one third of the men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five ever joined the military. And, a fourth of those military men (including my father) never left the United States.  (Source: "Selective Training and Service Act of 1940" in William H. Young and Nancy K. Young, World War II and the Postwar Years in America: A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia, Vol. 2. [Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010] pp. 617-621; John W. Jeffries, Wartime America: The World War II Home Front [Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996], 171.)