Reading about the draft during the Vietnam era, one finds that many young male Americans were very anxious about being drafted for service in the US military and being sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. They explored every possible way to avoid the draft like continuing their education, marrying early, studying for the clergy, feigning all sorts of illnesses etc.
But I always wondered why there weren’t easier ways. As far as I know, the United States, in contrast to a number of European nations, doesn’t have and never had a system in place that allowed the government to keep track of it’s citizens. As an American, you don’t have to register with the local city administration if you move inside the country or present yourself at the local police station.
Why didn’t these young men just live in a hut in the wilderness or in some unincorporated backwater? Or alternatively move to a large city like New York or Chicago were people often even don’t know their next door neighbour’s name?
I do understand that it was technically illegal not to register for the draft, but wasn’t it relatively easy to hide?
It’s true that this probably wasn’t an attractive option if you were socially well integrated in a community and wanted to keep it that way, but still.
Isn’t it true that a policeman didn’t have the right to stop a random young man in the street and ask him: “Why aren’t you wearing a uniform, son?”.
Weren’t employers required to see proof of your draft registration? (This would relegate you to pretty menial jobs - fine if you wanted to be a street artist, not good if you wanted a life).
Plus, if you were detained or arrested for any reason, the police would look for this information too. Then IIRC you would get charged and registered and possibly shipped out.
At the very least, employers need your Social Security number, easy to trace. So that ruled out any kind of actual job. “Living in a hut in the wilderness” presents all kinds of problems for someone not brought up in that environment. And living in a large city without a job has its own obvious difficulties.
I was lucky because I’m gay, and successfully convinced the draft board’s “inquisitor” of that fact. Otherwise, I’d probably have gone to Canada.
And along those lines, I’d always wondered about this. If so many were so desperate to avoid conscription, couldn’t they just walk up to their draft board, look their “inquisitor” straight in the eye, and say “Hey, you’re cute!” in the most seductive voice possible? That’s essentially how Chevy Chase got out, according to his Playboy interview.
Sorta anecdotal, but three young men were arrested in NYC during WWII (failure to register).
Their defense was “we’re from Staten Island-we didn’t know there was a war on”.
But yes-if you lived in the “underground economy” (no SS#, paid in cash, lived with friends), there wold be a pretty good chance you would escape notice.
And (even in the early years of the Vietnam War), there was quite a bit of skepticism-there was no great groundswell of patriotic young men joining p (as there had been in WWI and WWII).
What about the 1960’s radicals (Weather Underground, etc.)-many of them escaped detection for decades (despite being on FBI wanted lists).
It wasn’t that easy. They led me to a small room that contained a doctor sitting behind a desk. He asked me all sorts of questions about my sexuality, and specifically about my “lifestyle.” I especially remember questions about what kind of sex I enjoyed and how I went about finding men to have sex with. I seriously wonder if the guy was playing with himself under the desk.
And it didn’t hurt that I knew how to dress the part (skin-tight white jeans, horizontal striped t-shirt, penny loafers were the gay “uniform” that year). And I slightly softened my voice and my mannerisms . . . being careful not to overdo it and become a caricature.
A lot of straight guys tried this, and most failed. Gay guys too. It didn’t hurt that I had some background in acting.
They classified me as 1-Y, meaning I could still be drafted, but only in a national emergency.
Huh. That’s very different than Chevy Chase’s story. He essentially gave ambiguous answers all the way through and was classified 4-F. I’m assuming that he either embellished his story or, perhaps unbeknownst to him, was bumped for some other medical reason. Or his draft board was less thorough than yours.
Or, when did he do this? Did it get harder as time went on and they needed more bodies while more guys were trying harder and harder not to get drafeted?
In the Vietnam era, record keeping was much more lax than today’s computerized society. Birth certificates weren’t required much, and I always suspected that an 18 yo who kept his nose clean (no arrests and no informers) could avoid registering for the draft for many years. I almost wish I had tried it, and if I knew then what I know now, I probably would have.
I’ve never been asked, by any employer, to prove my military service, although the question is typically on a job application. Perhaps if the job is government or military-related, proof (DD214) would be required.
I once had a problem with an official record that had a “flaw” in it for 50 years, and only post-9/11 data mining uncovered it, and only today’s security climate thought it was serious enough to fix.
I had a secret security clearance in the 1980’s under an assumed name with no problems. If this can slip by, I doubt if 1960’s record cross-checking was much better. Remember, this was the punch-card era, and birth records were not readily available in computer form anywhere, to anyone.
Draft registration lists were based off of lists of high school graduates. If people dropped out of high school, they might not necessarily be on the radar for the draft (interesting how nobody’s calling it Selective Services…). I know of one guy who dropped out and lived in fear until the draft ended, and his brother dropped out, registered anyway and also lived in fear.
When President Carter let draft dodgers off the hook, my local paper in Maryland reported on one young man who was just living at home trying not to draw attention to himself.
Many years ago (heck I was a captain) the Army TImes had a headline along the lines of “Gay Sergeant Allowed to Retire.” It seems Mr. X was drafted and told the Army he was Gay. The Army told him to get in line. Off he went to Vietnam and all that until after 19 years of service the Army was shocked to discover “Hey! You’re Gay!”
