Conscription ("the draft") refers to compulsory enlistment into the armed forces or into labor pools supporting the armed forces. It was practiced by every major power that was involved in the Pacific War, though some of these powers restricted the deployment of drafted soldiers to the immediate homeland or areas close to the homeland.
Most armies preferred volunteers for combat formations, since they were thought to have superior esprit de corps. However, most faced shortages of volunteers to replace losses in these formations, and turned to conscription. It is unclear whether the superior performance of all-volunteer formations, such as the U.S. Marines up to 1945, was due to their volunteer makeup or their superior training and personnel policies. In his oral history, E.B. Sledge opined that draftee Marines who joined his unit (1 Marine Division) prior to the battle of Okinawa, and had the opportunity to train alongside experienced volunteers, performed well in combat; but draftee replacements sent directly into the line appeared to be poorly trained and did not perform well. It seems likely that, when a soldier first faced the awful realities of combat, his fighting power depended more on how well he had been trained and how much cohesion his unit enjoyed than on whether he had volunteered for the experience or had been conscripted.
It has been argued that an all-volunteer army is wasteful of
manpower. The qualities that make volunteers desirable to armies --
high motivation, education, and leadership skills -- are precisely the
qualities desirable in the industrial sector that supports the armies.
A man may make a greater contribution by working in an arms factory or
shipyard than by carrying a rifle on the front line. Likewise,
small-boat operators in the United
States were drafted into the Army when they would likely have given
better service as small craft crewmen in the Navy, had the Navy been
willing to accept draftees.
Japan. All Japanese men were required to report for examination at age 20, and those selected for military duty had an obligation to serve for two years. After this initial service they remained eligible to be called to active duty until age 40. The Japanese military prided itself on its thorough records on the status of reservists and its efficient system for calling them to the colors. One military affairs clerk boasted that (Cook and Cook 1998)
I ask you -- which was superior, the German military system, renowned throughout the world, or the Japanese system? Our system, which could raise large-scale units in less than twenty-four hours, was world-class! No one had a more thorough or efficient system for mobilizing soldiers to the colors than Japan.
Local military affairs clerks visited regularly with families in
their assigned areas to check the status of their sons. Parents could
be charged under military law for failing to pass along a conscription
notice to their son, whether or not he was still living at home. The
local clerks collected information on the family background of each
draftee and reservist that included information on family history and
economic assets.
Induction notices were typically delived in the middle of the night, since information on numbers inducted was a military secret, and they were opened by the military affairs clerk in the presence of the local mayor. However, when time permitted, the draftees were often sent off with much ceremony and congratulations.
By 1944 the manpower shortage was severe enough that men under the
age of 20 were pressured to volunteer. Some were boys as young as 15.
Australia. Australian conscripts were assigned to the militia and initially could not be deployed outside Australian territory. This restriction was progressively relaxed, first by allowing militia to be employed in Imperial territories such as New Guinea, then throughout the Southwest Pacific. Australian troops used elsewhere, such as the Middle East or areas of the Pacific beyond the prescribed limits, were volunteers of the 2 Australian Imperial Force.
Canada. Conscription policies in Canada were similar to those of Australia. Only volunteers could be deployed abroad, and conscripts were referred to derisively as "Zombies."
China. In areas nominally
controlled by the Kuomintang,
conscription was a brutal and often fatal process. Men of military age
were unceremoniously taken from their homes or even off the streets by
local formations whenever manpower was needed, and they received very
little training. Many were in terrible physical condition by the time
they reached the front line.
There are few accounts of if or how conscription
was carried out by the Chinese
Communists. However, even harsh critics of the Communists
acknowledge that sizeable numbers of volunteers flocked to
Communist-controlled regions of China, though they may not have found
conditions to be quite what they expected when they got there.
India. The Indian Army remained
all-volunteer throughout the war. Because of India's large population
and economic backwardness, the military was an attractive option to a
sufficiently large number of men that the Indian Army could be quite
selective. The result was that the percentage of white officers and men
in Indian Army divisions dropped steadily during the war, and
unprecedented numbers of native Indians received the King's Commission.
New Zealand. Conscription policies in New Zealand were similar to those of Australia. Certain formations, such as the Fiji Defense Force, took volunteers only.
United States. The United States had first instituted a draft during the Civil War of 1861-1865, and the draft was employed again during the First World War. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was the first peacetime draft instituted in the United States, albeit in response to the fall of France and the fear that the European war would spread. All males between ages 21 and 35 were subject to the draft, but the Act called for local juries (Selective Service Boards) to select not more than 900,000 men from this pool of roughly 25 million men. Those inducted were to serve for not more than a year, although this restriction was dropped in August 1941 as the world crisis deepened. The President could defer individuals from the draft, but there was no provision for exempt occupations. The act also included provisions to help ensure that those who were drafted could return to their jobs after completing their service.
The Act was carefully set up so that its administration was purely civilian. The Selective Service Boards were responsible for draftees until they were formally inducted by the Army at a training center, and federal oversight was provided by a civilian agency rather than the War Department.
There were six registrations between October 1940
and January 1943, and nearly 36 million men registered. The age limits
were changed to between 21 and 27 in August 1941, at the same time that
the one-year limit on service was lifted, but the age range was
expanded to 20 to 44 after war broke out. In November 1942 the lower
age limit was lowered
to 18, and in December 1942 the maximum age limit was lowered to 37.
The term of service following Pearl Harbor was "duration and six," that
is, draftees were to be released from duty within six months of the
termination of hostilities.
Initially all inductees were assigned to service
with the Army. The Navy, Marines, and specialist branches such as the paratroops
and the Army Air Forces took only volunteers. However, by late 1944, a
serious manpower shortage had developed and the Marines were compelled
to begin accepting draftees.
The Act allowed conscientious objection on religious grounds. Those objecting only to the bearing of arms were assigned to noncombatant duty, such as serving as medical corpsmen, and one such conscientious objector, Desmond Doss, received the Medal of Honor for courage under fire while performing his duties as a corpsman on Okinawa . Conscientious objectors who objected to any service in support of war were required to perform nonmilitary service, such as farm work, under civilian direction.
Of those registered for the draft, about 18 million were actually drafted during the war. Of these, about 6.5 million were rejected by the induction centers for physical, mental, or moral unfitness. The 11.5 million draftees were joined by 300,000 National Guardsmen and nearly six million volunteers. Had Japan not surrendered in August 1945, there were proposals to alleviate the manpower shortage by drafting up to 1.5 million women for noncombat duty.
References
Medal of Honor: Desmond Doss (accessed 2008-4-26)
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index