an appreciable number, I would say, of married men with wives only, because the married-dependency classification, classes III-A, III-B, and III-C, have a total of about, let us say, 11,000,000, involving somewhat less than 40 percent of the registrants, whereas sometime back you will recall that class III contained about 65 percent of the registrants. So. there have been considerable numbers, as we all know, of those with wives only who have been taken out of class III and have had their classification completed. In completing their classification, those with wives only who are necessary men in necessary industry have been dropped off into class II. The million in class II have not been physically examined. Consequently, many of them would not be physically eligible for the armed forces and, hence, if you took them all out of class II, the net you would get would not be many. We will get just a drop in the bucket from that class over a period of time.

Senator WHEELER. Let me ask you this: Why cannot the Selective Service have an examination of these men that are registered? Why cannot you give them physical examinations so that they will know in the immediate future whether or not they are going to be taken? I have introduced a bill which provides for that.

Colonel KEESLING. In the first place, Senator, without going into too much detail, the physical examinations in many cases would become stale. The physical condition of a man changes. You do not have enough doctors to do it. We have had a change from our dual examination. We used to give a complete examination at the local board, which was followed by the duplicating Army examination. We had to cut one of them out because of the shortage of doctors. There can only be one complete examination.

If you process completely and physically examine all of your deferred people you are processing and giving physical examinations to numbers of people who ultimately are not going to be inducted. It is my opinion that company physicians, or the individual's private physician can get hold of the Army MR-1-9 qualifications and pretty well tell whether they are going to be physically eligible for service. Senator WHEELER. You certainly haven't done it, because in Montana this is what you did: They were sending them down from Butte, from Forsyth, from every town, and they went down to Missoula, and in one lot 23 boys went back to Forsyth. In Butte they gave them banquets, their friends would buy presents for them because they were going into the Army, and then they went down to Missoula and were turned down.

Colonel KEESLING. The final examination is not given now until the man goes to the induction station and appears before the Army examination board. The local board examination now is but a screening test for obvious defects. We were only able to have one examination because of administrative procedures and lack of doctors, and that examination, it was determined, would be at the time the man reported for induction, when he would be given an examination by the Army board.

Senator WHEELER. The difficulty with that is this: You upset an awful lot of men. They do not know, and they cannot possibly know, businessmen and other people, do not know whether or not they are physically fit to be taken into the Army.

Colonel KEESLING. I agree with you, Senator.

Senator WHEELER. That has a very bad morale effect on them. Colonel KEESLING. To meet that problem, some time ago we had a procedure whereby the man reported for his physical examination at the Army induction station, was given a physical examination, and, if he passed it, he was not immediately inducted but went home and was ordered up 3 weeks or so later. It so happened the Army was losing a number of men who passed the physical examination to the Navy and other services because of their active recruiting methods. That was changed so that if a man passed the physical examination the Army inducted him immediately and then granted him a furlough. The furlough was originally 14 days, I understand. It was subsequently cut to 7 days, in order to make up a week's deficit by reason of stopping the induction of a number of farm boys last fall.

The matter is under continual consideration down at headquarters, because there have been some suggestions and criticisms coming in on this very point, that there should be some method of working out a system whereby those who need additional time to wind up their affairs can be granted either an additional furlough beyond the 7 days or perhaps in some special cases there be a preinduction examination given where it is obvious you should have additional time, but to come in wholesale and give it to everybody, when there are just thousands and thousands who can go off like that [snapping fingers], we would get a situation which I do not think you can handle, because of shortage of doctors.

Senator WHEELER. It is not a question, it seems to me, of taking them. The question is as to the morale of the people. They do not know they are going to be taken, they do not know whether they have got to close up their shop. The little merchant does not know whether he has to close up his shop, whether he is going to taken to the Army, or what is going to be done.

Colonel KEESLING. You cannot give him definite assurance, even if you gave him a physical examination far in advance, because the examination in advance, the blood examination, and everything else, is stale. Even when some of the fellows are on furlough, when they come back from the furlough they have contracted diseases.

Senator AUSTIN. Up to this time have you deferred married men with children?

Colonel KEESLING. Yes, sir. We have a specific release which prohibits the taking of what we define as married men with children. I will put it in the record if you think it is advisable. It is local board memorandum 123. This is the latest revision of it down here in paragraph 8, "New class II-A temporarily frozen."

Senator WHEELER. When was that issued?

Colonel KEESLING. This latest revision was just recent. I can give you the date when the original one went in. It was some time ago. Senator WHEELER. You were taking married men with children? Colonel KEESLING. Not under the Selective Service definition. I will put it this way, Senator: No man who was married prior to December 8, 1941, or at the time when his induction was not imminent, whose child was conceived prior to Pearl Harbor, was being taken, with the exception of farm fathers inducted under the Tydings amendment for leaving the farms without getting the approval of their local boards, and with the further exception of those affected by the so-called nondeferrable order, which went into effect, I believe, April 1, pro

4

military service or work of national importance until such reclassification is ordered by the Director of Selective Service or a change in status occurs.

Senator WHEELER. I understand that, but the thing that brought this about, if I may say again, is just the statement you made here today. You are going to have to go into them not later than August.

Colonel KEESLING. You are going to go into them not later than August, under proper classification policies of men deferred in industry and men deferred in Government. Even assuming you have that and get out those that should come out, you are still going to have to go in and take the married men with children.

Senator WHEELER. You are still going to have to go in and take men with children?

Colonel KEESLING. That is right.

Senator WHEELER. You take your clerks in the grocery stores, you take for instance, in the Palace Laundry here, the man operating that laundry was telling me the other day, "My God, I have married men that have been with me 20 years, have been with me a long time, that have children. They don't know where they are."

He said it is just breaking down the morale of the people that are working for him because they do not know whether they are going to have to be taken, and because of confusing orders they are all put out about it. One day they say they will take men with children and another day they give freezing orders, they say they are not going to take them.

Colonel KEESLING. It is unfortunate that some such statements have appeared publicly. What the reason for it is I do not know, but it is quite a definite proposition that men with wives and children, as we have defined them, are going to be taken in appreciable numbers commencing sometime in August, or sooner.

Senator WHEELER. Yes; that is the reason I have introduced the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Senator, we are very glad to have had you with us.

MARRIED MEN EXEMPTION

[Drafting of Fathers]

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON MILITARY AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE

SEVENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

S. 763

A BILL EXEMPTING CERTAIN MARRIED MEN WHO
HAVE CHILDREN FROM LIABILITY UNDER THE
SELECTIVE TRAINING AND SERVICE

ACT OF 1940, AS AMENDED

[REVISED CONSOLIDATED PRINT]

MAY 5, SEPTEMBER 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 1943

Printed for the use of the Committee on Military Affairs

black markets in this country from one end to the other, and in addition to that you are going to have inflation, and all your price. controls cannot possibly stop it. We ought to have some common sense in the thing and not be carried away by the statement that you have to win the war and it is necessary.

Now, everybody wants to win the war, but if these figures that Senator Johnson has given me are correct, and he tells me he can verify everyone of them, I think it is high time that we do something about it.

Colonel KEESLING. Do those figures include men who are in the process of being trained?

Senator WHEELER. Yes.

Colonel KEESLING. In other words, a large number of those men are men who are in training and not necessarily doing guard duty. Senator WHEELER. That is right.

Colonel KEESLING. There was some misunderstanding about it. Senator WHEELER. NO.

Colonel KEESLING. In other words, these men are in the process of being trained. They are getting their training prior to being sent to the battle lines.

Senator WHEELER. That is right, they are in the process of being trained. A lot of them are on guard duty here, a lot of them are on guard duty some place else and a lot of them are on guard duty some other place. Now, the people they could have for guard duty may not be able to stand up and take the rigid training that you need for combat service, but certainly any man between 38 and 45 can go out here and guard these plants.

Colonel KEESLING. It is my understanding, Senator, from the figures that Senator Austin read, that ultimately there are only going to be a few men doing guard duty; that a number of men are in the process of training not for guard duty but for combat service, and one of the reasons they cannot ship them now is they are not trained enough yet.

Senator WHEELER. You are not training them when you have them guarding the railroad, when you have them guarding a bridge somewhere, there certainly is not much training in that.

Colonel KEESLING. I do not believe they are putting the untrained men on that duty. The figures that Senator Austin read show that relatively few men would be on that duty.

Senator WHEELER. That may be. I am just calling attention to the fact that is one thing the people do see. They see the young men out here guarding these places, doing the various things, and they say, "Why in the name of God should you take married men when you could use the older men?"

Colonel KEESLING. Everybody, of course, agrees that there should be proper utilization of manpower in the Army and the Navy, the same as in any other place.

Senator WHEELER. That is right, and it certainly is not being done, in my judgment. If you cannot send abroad and use more than 1,964,000 by December 31, 1943, and you still have 3,845,000 here in the United States, why take them? Now, I would like to say something off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)