REPORTS ON DEFERMENTS

I would like to mention one other congressional mandate, which is not budgeted but which has a bearing on our statistical activities. The act requires that each month there shall be filed with the national headquarters of the Selective Service System for the purpose of making a report to the Congress, the name of every man who works for the Government and is deferred because of that fact. In order that we may discharge that responsibility, we have required all our local boards to report on the 15th day of each month, starting on the 15th of May-and the first report will be ready for Congress about the 15th of June the name of every man deferred because he works in the Government, and they must also show that the method of securing his deferment was in accordance with the same act, which established agency committees. That will also require us to cross-check, starting on the 15th of June, by requiring governmental agencies to report to us the people they asked for, and we will have the job of determining that the requests made to our boards are genuine by checking and cross-checking one with the other.

OPERATIONS IN LOCAL BOARDS

I would like to say one more thing. If you add up all of the classifications and reclassifications made in each local board each month, you will find that it runs into the staggering total of 4,000,000. That means 4,000,000 operations that the local board will have every month. Between the 1st of July last year and the 31st of March we had to have something between twenty and twenty-five thousand men appear every day at the Army induction stations. Since the 31st of March that has fallen off a little because the calls are not as high as they were. But we have been forced to have somewhere between 450,000 and 500,000 each month, and when we figure on 25 days in a month on which to send people, that means about 20,000 a day, and with a 10-hour day that is 2,000 per hour.

Of course, they do not all qualify, but as far as we are concerned the local board clerk has to get out the papers and the local board has to present them, because we do not know who will pass and who will not.

DISCUSSION OF REJECTIONS

(See p. 225)

I would like to say in passing that some of our troubles stem from the fact that we are going through a transition period at the present time in which we are trying, and the armed forces are trying, to get a common ground for acceptance and a reduction in physical exemptions. We have not reached agreement yet. The variance is between 15 and 25 per cent.

Mr. ENGEL. That is between the Army and the Navy?

General HERSHEY. That is right.

Mr. THOMAS. What is the total number of rejections per annum now?

General HERSHEY. I would like to qualify the answer to that by saying this. If you take the number rejected by the Navy that will

86811-43-pt. 3—15

give you one percentage. If you take the number rejected by the Army that will give you quite a different percentage.

Let me explain that. Starting with the 1st of February the Army and Navy agreed upon joint induction stations. They said. "We will have to examine every one on the Navy standard. We will divide the ones that pass on the basis of 4.4 to 1." It is less than that now.

The Army said, "We will go 17 percent below that level, below the level for general service," and for special, limited service they accepted 10 cent.

Mr. HARE. Below the 17 percent?

General HERSHEY. For limited service. They found they were getting not only their own 27 percent below the Navy line, but they were getting ones the Navy had not called

Mr. ENGEL. And lowered the grade of men which the Army was getting by the percentage that the Navy refused to take?

General HERSHEY. Yes. In other words, they were getting that many more substandard people. First they said they would only accept certain men beyond a certain age, and then they said they could not do that because if you accept those only, then you see what a position that leaves you in.

So then they stopped taking people for limited service, although I think in some service commands they are taking men for limited service when they find men with the particular qualifications they are looking for.

I am optimistic in thinking that those standards will move down. but I am not as optimistic as I might hope to be in thinking that they will be moving down as far as they ought to go.

I would like to burden you with one or two other things on the broad pattern.

Mr. HARE. You will not burden the committee because the committee seeks all the information available about your service. This is the first time we have had the privilege and the pleasure of considering the justifications for this Bureau, and we want all the details you can give us.

General HERSHEY. If you take all of our registrants you can divide them in the middle; about 50 percent will pass the old Army examination. Just about 50 percent will qualify in the general service field.

If you consider the planning we did before the war as to what you could use in limited service, down to the last fellow who walks with a cane, who can contribute something, down to what you might call the dregs, you will induct at least half of the remainder. They divide down into 50 percent for general service on the old Army examination and 25 percent on limited service and about 25 percent totally disqualified, which may be called the dregs, since you cannot use them. Obviously, that is not true of every group that goes to an induction station, because we have reached different age groups at different times. Perhaps around 60 to 65 percent, if the Navy standard were adopted, would be in the neighborhood of the number unqualified for general service.

Mr. ENGEL. With the Navy standard in operation only 35 percent would be accepted?

General HERSHEY. The reason I hesitate in saying this-and I am not trying to hedge-the Navy number will be different from that

because in recruiting they have been recruiting from their general quota. There was a time when the Navy would not accept you unless you had a high-school education, and then they came back to a requirement for 2 years of high-school education.

Mr. ENGEL. Was not the reason you stopped enlistments of that type because it gave one service, so far as enlistments were concerned, the opportunity of taking the cream and leaving the skimmed milk for the other service?

General HERSHEY. Yes; but I think the milk, taking the cream off the top, is pretty good milk to the people getting just the dregs, and your recruiting cut horizontally rather than vertically. Also, in addition to all the other chaos, it tends to cut your supply horizontally, and you will always find that there are a number of serious causes why you have so many in one group that you could not use and you could not transfer, and you do not get them transferred because the company commander wanted to keep a good corporal. If he has three first-class privates and two old corporals he wants to keep his shop running, and it is not human nature to turn loose all his good men and keep the dregs.

NUMBER OF INDUCTIONS

Mr. HARE. Do you have figures showing the number of people you have inducted since the beginning?

General HERSHEY. Yes.

Mr. HARE. We will be glad to have you insert them in the record. General HERSHEY. The total inducted as of the 30th of April was 5.457.924.

Mr. HARE. That is in the armed services, or into the Army?
General HERSHEY. That was in the armed services.

There were enlisted, of registrants, 2,348,000 by the end of April. Those two figures, which run over 7,000,000, do not include nonregistrants who were either in the service at the time the bill passed or were in the National Guard and did not have to register, or later entered some service where they did not have to register. A lot of the 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds did not have to register. My figure of 7,800,000 as of April 30 does not include some other individuals-how many I do not know.

NUMBER AND CAUSES OF REJECTIONS
(See p. 223)

Mr. HARE. Do you have figures showing how many were rejected by your local boards?

General HERSHEY. You mean physically?

Mr. HARE. Yes.

General HERSHEY. Yes; on the last day of April, of the total number in IV-F, I can give you those figures, but that includes both the local board rejections and the Army induction rejections.

Mr. HARE. If you have this information in tabular form it would be well, possibly, for us to have it inserted in the record.

want.

General HERSHEY. I will be glad to insert almost anything you But I would like to know exactly what you want us to put in. Mr. HARE. You can probably tell about how many have been rejected.

General HERSHEY. Let me put that in the record. As of April 30, 2,870,000 are reported as having been rejected either by the local boards or at the induction stations. The number rejected by the armed forces to April 30 is 2,255,000. That would leave four or fire hundred thousand rejected by the local boards.

Mr. ENGEL. Out of a total of how many?

General HIRSHEY. We have processed approximately 30,000,000. The men who were in class III-A or class III-B, or any of these deferred classes, did not take the armed forces examination.

Colonel NOELL. The armed forces induction authorities have examined some 7,713,000 registrants.

Mr. ENGEL. How many of those were rejected?

Colonel NOELL. Of those, 2,255,000 were rejected by the armed forces.

Mr. HRE. Do you have the figures showing the rejections by types and disabilities?

General HERSHEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. ENGEL. Can you furnish those figures for the record?
General HERSHEY. Yes, sir.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

Estimated principal causes for rejection of registrants 18-44 years of age, as of Apr.

30, 1943 (preliminary)

Mr. HARE. I was going to ask you if there were any outstanding disabilities.

General HERSHEY. Yes. For the whites the outstanding reason for rejection at the present time is mental disease.

Mr. HARE. Mental incapacity?

General HERSHEY. Mental unbalance. You have probably about 16 or 17 percent of the white rejects with mental disease. You have 6 or 8 percent neurological cases. Then you have cases of mental incapacity, which will run 2 or 3 percent. Currently, the cases of mental disease in Negroes run relatively less. We are running about one-third of our white rejections for mental and nervous reasons, so that it is a little disturbing sometimes.

Mr. THOMAS. How do you discover these mental deficiencies? General HERSHEY. That is done primarily by the Army induction stations, because the only thing the local board considers are people who have been institutionalized or who have obvious mental diseases. That is one of the controversial things.

Week before last in Detroit there was the national convention of the Association of Psychiatrists, and they said among other things about Selective Service that it had only given lip service to the elimination of those who are unable to stand modern warfare. When it appears that about a third of your rejections for white are for mental and nervous reasons, you take pause to ponder how you can run a successful war. Maybe we are all unfit for modern war. Where does that leave us if we must win the fight? Reference has been made to the fact that men in battle for the first time in the South Pacific were badly affected but none of these were inductees. Mr. THOMAS. What does your study show?

General HERSHEY. It shows that some of these people broke mentally. I think when you consider the tropical climate, and the difficulties in getting food to the men, and the constant bombing night and day, and also the fact that that was their first entrance into or experience with that kind of warfare, that is bound to have had its effect on those men, and I do not believe you could find human beings who could stand indefinitely that kind of warfare.

Mr. TARVER. What information do you have as to the existence of neuropsychiatric diseases or disabilities among the Japanese prisoners taken on Guadalcanal?

General HERSHEY. None. The only thing I know about the matter is probably what you gentlemen have read, but it happens I have fussed around with this thing as a sort of a hobby, and what happened was exactly what I had expected would happen.

I think after a man has had so many fights you will need to get him away for a considerable period of time. Also, his attitude is different and he has all the fear of the unknown. It is largely a question of the control of fear.

Mr. THOMAS. I would like to have your reaction to the inquiry as to how long you think a person should be kept in the Tropics without being relieved.

General HERSHEY. I am a little humble there. I do not know enough about the situation to be able to give you a competent answer on that, but I think the World War showed that you have to frequently relieve men.

Mr. HARE. In following the philosophy of the Selective Service System, do you think a certain amount of rest for men in the service would tend to build up the highest degree of efficiency in the armed forces?

General HERSHEY. I do not believe I ought to hang some of these things on the selective service. What I am saying to you now is simply as a humble student, speaking entirely as a layman, because I am not a doctor.

Mr. HARE. Suppose you were transferred from your present position to the head of the Army or the Navy. Would you be inclined to give them a rest every 2 or 3 months?

General HERSHEY. I would. I think that is inevitable. I would not want to be accused of trying to let down' discipline, but we have