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Summary comparison statement, funds available for 1943, positions filled as of May 1, 1943, funds obligated as of Mar. 31, 1943, and funds requested for 1944, Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs-Continued

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Summary comparison statement, funds available for 1943, positions filled as of May 1, 1943, funds obligated as of Mar. 31, 1943, and funds requested for 1944, Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs-Continued

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Rockefeller.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I would like to say that I appreciate very much the patience that you gentlemen have displayed, and particularly the interest that you have shown in the work. It is very encouraging to all of our people, and very stimulating to us to know that you gentlemen are taking this interest in it. We are at your service at any time during the year, individually or as a group, to give you information and to keep you just as close to this work as you are willing to give the time to follow it with us. We would like your advice and counsel as we go along.

The CHAIRMAN. We are gratified at the results that you are getting. Mr. ROCKEFELLER. We appreciate that very much, Mr. Chairman.

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1943.

OFFICE OF CIVILIAN DEFENSE

STATEMENTS OF JAMES M. LANDIS, DIRECTOR; JOHN B. MARTIN, ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR; W. D. DENIT, CHIEF, PERSONNEL AND FISCAL MANAGEMENT DIVISION; W. B. ROECA, BUDGET OFFICER; DR. GEORGE BAEHR, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER; REGINALD FOSTER, CHIEF, CIVILIAN WAR SERVICES BRANCH; COL. R. C. BISHOP, EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PROTECTION BRANCH; FRANCIS S. GAY, PRINCIPAL TECHNICAL CONSULTANT; AND COL. E. L. WHITE, ASSISTANT TO CHIEF OF THE PROTECTION BRANCH, AND IN CHARGE OF PROPERTY

SALARIES AND EXPENSES

The CHAIRMAN. We have before us, Mr. Landis, an estimate, in House Document 153, for a deficiency appropriation, as follows:

OFFICE OF CIVILIAN DEFENSE

Salaries and expenses, Office of Civilian Defense: For all necessary expenses of the Office of Civilian Defense, including salary of the Director at not to exceed $10,000 per annum; traveling expenses (not to exceed $735,000); and printing and binding (not to exceed $275,000)__

$5, 949, 550

The amount of the estimate is $5,949,550. Your appropriation for 1943 was $7,447,075, which indicates that you are asking, for 1944, $1,497,525 less than you were given in 1943. The $5,949,550 is exclusive of salaries totaling $180,200 to be paid by the Army, as I understand it.

Mr. LANDIS. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. And also personnel paid from the $100,000,000 for equipment?

Mr. LANDIS. That is right.

FUNCTIONS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE OFFICE OF CIVILIAN DEFENSE

The CHAIRMAN. Will you give us a statement on this item, Mr Landis?

Mr. LANDIS. I think, perhaps, I can best give a statement on this budgetary item if I review for a moment the functions and some of the work of the Office of Civilian Defense over the past year.

The operating functions of the Office of Civilian Defense are carried on, or have been carried on, through three branches-the Protection Branch, the Civilian War Services Branch, and the Division of Civil Air Patrol. The programs that are developed and sponsored by these branches are, in turn, carried out throughout the United States by State and local councils of defense that are organized by the States and the localities themselves.

Today there are about 14,000 local defense councils in existence. They represent about 80 percent of the Nation's population, and that is about twice as many councils as were in existence this time a year ago.

86664-43-23

I think it is worthy to comment for a moment upon the nature of these councils, for they are the operating agencies of the whole program of civilian defense in the United States.

Unlike most Federal agencies, or most agencies which have operating branches down at the grass roots, the Office of Civilian Defense is not a straight-line operating agency. It has not any employees in the field who actually operate programs.

The function of operating programs is the responsibility of State and local officials whose authority derives from the locality or the State, as the case may be, and who are not subject to Federal control in the sense that they cannot be ordered to undertake any specific responsibility, or cannot be prevented from carrying out anything they choose. And that is true of the volunteers and the paid personnel of the State and local councils. They are paid by the States or the localities, as the case may be. They are the ones who operate the programs of civilian defense. The Office of Civilian Defense is concerned with the organization of these councils and the suggestion and development of programs for their operation.

PROTECTION BRANCH

I think, first, it might be desirable for me to take up the activities of the protection branch. Those activities are concerned with the organization of the United States for protection against enemy attack; that is, primarily air bombardment.

I think if you would turn to the organization chart which is at the front of this volume, you can see very easily what the activities are of that protection branch. One thing to be noted about this whole. protection program is that it has to be coordinated at all times with whatever military plans are in existence for the defense of the United States.

This tying together of the civilian program and the military program is accomplished by constant and close exchange of information and planning between us and the military at every level. The protection branch, for example, is headed by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who was loaned to us by the Army, and to the work of that protection branch are assigned about 53 officers, exclusive of those officers assigned to the protective equipment division.

The focal point of contact that we have with the War Department is through the Chief of Administrative Services of the Army Service Forces, and through that we have contracts with the United States. Engineers, Chemical Warfare Service, and, in the field, with the defense commands and the service commands.

I point that out because I think it is important that one realize that the military and the civilian programs must be tied in very closely together.

Actually we have divided the United States, from our standpoint, into nine regions, which are coterminous with the regions under the jurisdiction of the service commands, so that any group of States for which the service command has a policy can coordinate that policy with the policy that stems through our regional office, which has similar jurisdiction over those States.

I dwell on this because both tactically and organizationally, our protective program is in line with the military program. Our target

areas, for example, are not picked exclusively by us, but are picked in conjunction with military authorities. Our work in the field of internal security is closely tied in with the internal security program of the Army, and in planning for matters like evacuation, or assisting in the recruitment of aircraft warning spotters, or in the development of black-out techniques, and the like, it is always a matter of working together closely with the Army.

The work of the Protection Branch concerns itself broadly with the organization, the recruitment, and the training of volunteers, that we speak of as the United States Citizens Defense Corps which today comprises some 6,000,000 people.

I think that one can fairly say today that those 6,000,000 people are not a loose, disorganized, untrained group; but they are pretty well disciplined, and I think they are capable of being used in accordance with the exigencies of any situation that might arise. They have not had the opportunity of demonstrating their efficiency under enemy action, but they have responded, and responded very capably, to a series of natural disasters that have occurred in this country during the past year.

If you will look at the Protection Division, on the chart, an examination of that would show first a control and communications section, which concerns itself firstly with the dissemination of warnings that come down from the fighter command, but have to be carried to every affected community, and actually to every person in that community. It concerns itself with a much more difficult problem than that however; and that is what we know as the control system, or the organization of conditions that make possible command over any particular unit of the Citizens Defense Corps. To realize that objective, you have to be certain that members of the corps can quickly report to their appropriate headquarters the occurrence and the character of any incidents; be certain that the incidents are evaluated properly at headquarters; and then that the dispatch of the appropriate services occurs to the incidents.

FIRE DEFENSE SECTION

Secondly, you will find a section there called the Fire Defense. Section, which is concerned with the expansion of existing fire-fighting units; the development of mutual aid arrangements between communities, and the provision of equipment for these units, as well as training not only the auxiliary units, but the great portion of the general protective services in elementary principles of fire-fighting and fire prevention.

ENGINEERING SECTION

Thirdly, we come down to a group of problems that the Engineering Section deals with. They can be spoken of under the general terms of protective concealment, protective construction, and black-out. The problems themselves originate as highly technical problems of blackout or of protective construction, and of the resistance of various different types of structures to high explosives, but they reach the field as broad programs of how to effect ends of that nature with the greatest economy that one can.

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