Drafted! With a Wife and Two Kids!

 In October of 1943, my father (Everett H. Chabino) received a revised Notice of Classification which changed his classification to 1 - A. At the time, he was 30 years old.  He had married my mother in December of 1939.  My sister was born in 1940 and my brother in 1942.  Below is his Draft Notice.  My father entered service in the Navy in January of 1944 and was released in December of 1945. I was born in May of 1947.

 

 

Draft Notice

 

A bit of investigation provided the following information about drafting married men with children.  

"On September 16, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented the first peacetime draft in history, known as the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. The following year, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, the United States was at war. Thousands of young men rushed to the recruitment centers and joined the Armed Forces, but after the excitement wore off and they realized this would be a long and bloody involvement, enlistment fell well below the demand.

All men between the ages of 18 and 64 were required to register for the draft, but married men were exempt from military service. Many a man chose to march down the aisle rather than march for Uncle Sam, enough so that Brigadier General Heber L. Edwards, state Selective Service director, felt a need to clarify the status of eligible married men on this date in 1942.

The regulation stated, “Such married status must have been acquired prior to December 8, 1941, and at a time when the registrant’s selection was not imminent.” So, any man married after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was eligible for military service. However, General Edwards pointed out that the word “imminent” was the key to understanding the draft status for married men. Although December 8, 1941 was the only date mentioned in the draft regulation, the national appeals board declared that the selection of any man for military service was imminent as soon as they registered for the draft back in 1940, even though the United States was not yet at war.

The Selective Service Board did make two exceptions for men who married after September of 1940. If a child had been born to this union prior to December 8, 1941, then the man would be exempted from the draft. The second exception was if the man had been given a 4F Classification, meaning he was unfit for military service – his induction into military service was not imminent and therefore his marital status exempted him from the draft even if the disability was corrected."

    SOURCE 

 

In June of  1942, "Congress has issued revisions to the Selective Service Act to permit all married men deferment from Class I-A draft classification for military service until further notice. Within the next week, the new draft deferment system should reach President Franklin Roosevelt’s desk for a signature of approval or veto.

Men who were aware of their impending induction when they got married will not eligible for deferment under the new amendment. This means that the intention to avoid military service disqualifies such persons. Married men who have already been officially inducted into the armed forces will also be ineligible for a deferment.

This would be one of the biggest changes to the Selective Service Act since its passage in 1940.

“We want the unmarried men taken first,” Democrat Sen. Joshua B. Lee of Oklahoma said. “This is recognizing, in a legislative way, that the family is the fundamental unit of organized society.”

The purpose of this draft amendment, according to Sen. Lee and other officials, is to make sure that the families are “left intact as long as possible and that financial dependency is not the controlling point so much as the status of a man as the family,” Lee said.

Financial dependency requirements, or what is widely known as “the financial test,” are at present the only grounds for deferment for healthy men of fighting age. This test would be repealed as a result of this new amendment. Whether the wives and/or children of married men obtain their financial support from them will no longer affect a man’s draft classification.

To dispel fears that this new deferment law will cause a personnel shortage in the military, Sen. Warren Austin of Vermont and Sen. Elbert D. Thomas of Utah stated that the “present pools of single men or men without dependents should meet all manpower demands of the fighting forces through this year and well into 1943.”

    SOURCE

Obviously, the United States felt the need to draft even married men with children.  Luckily for me, my father returned safely at the end of the war.