American Blood Lottery. How US mobilization worked during the Vietnam War
American citizens have a special reverence for lotteries, which is reflected in popular culture. There are 45 state “scams” alone, and the largest of them – PowerBall and Megamillions – allow the lucky one to hit the jackpot, sometimes exceeding $1.5 billion. People are looking forward to the next drawings, forming multimillion-dollar ratings for TV channels broadcasting events live.
However, in 1969, everything took a different turn: a live lottery was held on the air by decree of President Richard Nixon, in which the winners received not a cash check, but a possible ticket to Vietnam.
On November 26, 1969, Nixon signed Executive Order No. 11497 “On amendments to the procedure for selection for military service”, providing for the procedure random mobilization the male population of the United States, and the first draw “blood lottery” passed in a few days – December 1.
background
By 1963, the army faced an unusual problem: the number of men to be drafted exceeded the annual recruitment requirements of the armed forces: the reason for this was the post-war baby boom. The lottery was one possible solution, but L.B. Hershey strongly opposed the idea.
In his opinion, the difference between the existing system of individual deferrals and the lottery was
“…essentially the difference between man and machine. The people in the local councils have more compassion than the machine… [которая] cannot tell if a person is more valuable as a father, a student, a scientist, a doctor, or a soldier”
Hershey convinced President Kennedy to put all married men in a special low priority category, and the problem was solved. By 1966, deferrals for life, paternity, and marriage outnumbered study deferrals by nearly two to one.
However, the intensification of the Vietnam War almost immediately increased the draft from less than ten thousand to more than thirty thousand a month. The growth of needs was so rapid that the state was soon faced with lack of potential recruits.
The system had to be tightened: the second paternity deferment was not granted to those who received it during their student days, and college students with low scores were driven to math test (The subject was chosen by Hershey himself). More than 750,000 young people took this test in 1966-1967, and many of those who scored the lowest lost their exemption and got an extraordinary chance to be in the Vietnamese jungle.
The resulting protests against the mobilization were punished quite severely. Describe the case when “on the personal instructions of Hershey, 35 students who were holding a sit-in outside the draft board in Ann Arbor (Michigan) were demonstratively deprived of their deferment.”
American courts, in turn, gave some criminals the right to choose between the army and prison. By the time this practice was abolished, there were several thousand convicts in military service, incl. for anti-war speeches. Some of them later formed a core of resistance.
However, there were plenty of chances to get a reprieve. For example, a man could claim a deferment by inviting an unemployed or dependent to live in his house. Interestingly, there were no strict restrictions on the income of a person wishing to receive a benefit.
The number of marriages has sharply increased, incl. fictitious. The head of the Georgia draft board, Colonel Harry Smith, recalled that “in one week, 46 men got married at once, who were ordered to urgently appear on the draft board.”
In 1968, the New York City Draft Boards approved a deferral for full-time teachers. This led to the fact that already in 1969, 85% of teachers were men of military age, and the popularity of pedagogical universities increased by 8 times!
But even without receiving a reprieve, the conscripts had another chance – a medical commission. The manipulations of the evaders were extremely diverse and, at times, cruel. Young people not only pierced their forearms with pins, imitating injections, but also deliberately injected themselves with heroin, preparing for the draft board. Athletes with joint injuries deliberately exacerbated their problems. Among the most significant are:
eating three pizzas every night for 6 months to become extremely obese;
the ingestion of 60 eggs before the draft board, as a result of which blood tests showed an excess of albumin levels;
cutting off the phalanges of the fingers;
shotgun shot in the leg;
consumption of one’s own blood before the examination, which caused vomiting, ideally in the doctor’s office;
imitation of homosexuality;
urination on the desk of the selection committee;
intentional blinding, crooked teeth, etc.
In the teaching environment there were people who artificially inflated the marks of young people, “only if they are not complete idiots.”
Employers could lobby for a deferment for their subordinates by appointing them to leadership positions or justifying their indispensability. A government commission in the late 1960s found that about half of all men who obtained a deferral for employment received it illegally.
Advice on questions of service in the army has gained unprecedented proportions. The success rates were staggering, with about 90% percent of potential recruits receiving benefits. The cost was very reasonable – from 200 to 1000 dollars, but due to the truly global scale, gigantic money was spinning in this business. For example, at the height of the war towards the end of the 60s, lawyers served over a million clients a year!
The goals of the call, despite the roughness, were achieved. Between 1965 and 1967, the number of military personnel in Vietnam increased from 190,000 to 500,000. At the same time, large-scale anti-war resistance was launched in society, provoked, incl. most call-up procedureleaving many loopholes.
American Lottery (draft)
On December 1, 1969, a lottery was held in Washington, D.C. to determine the order of enlistment during calendar year 1970 for persons born between January 1, 1944 and December 31, 1950.
One of the goals of the lottery was to eliminate the inequality in conscription, because there used to be a rule according to which older men (26 years old) were called first
In a large glass container, there were 366 blue plastic capsules with dates of birth, handwritten with priority numbers for all 850,000 men aged 19 to 26.
Secretary Baker (pictured above) will say: “This represents the first application of a principle that many of us believe will allow for the selection of soldiers for national honor abroad and at home in a fully democratic, equitable and fair manner.
On live radio and television, the capsules were retrieved from the container. The first capsule contained the number 258, which corresponded to the date September 14, so all men born on September 14 between 1944 and 1950 were assigned the number 1. The draw continued until all the days of the year had been matched with serial numbers.
The Department of Defense set the official lottery number ceiling for the coming year 1970 at 195. This meant that men with lower serial numbers could be called up for service in the order corresponding to their numbers.
195 is the official ceiling. In various states, it could be adjusted downward, based on the mobilization potential of the region and the actual recruitment.
Among men born on the same day, the order was also established depending on the first letters of the initials:
For example, those with the initials “JJJ” would be called first, followed by “JGJ”, “JDJ”, and “JXJ”; any person with the initials “VVV” would be the last one.
From the point of view of probability theory, the organization of the lottery did not take into account the main thing: the distribution of lottery numbers over the months of the year was not uniform:
Further fueling the situation was the fact that the unfair distribution was due to the way the capsules stirred.
The capsules were added to a large box, moved to one side with a partition, the next month’s capsules were filled in and then mixed. Thus, the January capsules were mixed 11 times, and the December ones only 1 time!
Having completed the procedures, the officer in charge (Captain Pascoe) shook the box, walked up three flights of stairs shortly before the draw, and then, in full view of the public, poured the contents into a glass container. Moreover, Pascoe himself did not remember from which end of the box he poured out the capsules. Obviously, this could affect the results of the lottery.
This led to the expected skew: only five days in December 2,12,15,17 and 19 had serial numbers less than 195. Thus, for men born in this month, the chance of being called was significantly greater than for the rest. However, the lottery still paid off: by the end of 1970, 162,746 people were called up for service with a quota of 163,500.
But the community was in turmoil. Several youths have filed suit in federal court seeking the annulment of the 1970 lottery and a new lottery. The reason for these claims was the lack of proper randomization: the correlation between birthday (1-366) and call number was 0.28.
Journal Time in the issue of December 12, 1969, only fueled the flames:
Those whose birth dates were drawn in the first third will almost certainly be called. Those who fall in the middle have a fifty-fifty chance. The rest can safely stay at home.
Therefore, in 1970, the new head of the draft system, Curtis Tarr, changed the algorithm for generating lottery numbers. In order to develop a lottery that in 1971 would guarantee a fairer choice, scientific potential had to be used.
Scientists from the National Bureau of Standards using a computer prepared 78 random permutations of numbers from 1 to 366. Of the 78 permutations, 25 were randomly selected and compared in order to the days of the year No. 1 = January 1, No. 2 = January 2, … No. 365 = 31th of December. In addition, random permutations were sealed in another 25 envelopes without reference to the calendar. On June 2, 1970, one envelope from these two groups was placed on the drums.
On July 1, the day of the draw, one reel rotated for an hour, and the other for half an hour (its rotational mechanism failed). In the first “draw” from one drum they pulled out a capsule from September 16, and from the other – 139, which determined the number of the call.
The lottery drawing under the new rules and already without failures was held from 1971 to 1975 (for men born in 1952-1956). In 1975, the Vietnam War ended for the Americans with the fall of Saigon, and the American Blood Lottery has never been played since. Forever, right?
Materials used
1. New York Times article, January 4, 1970.
2. Statistical information on the number of troops in Vietnam and categories of conscription (there are deferment codes from the service).
3. More statistics.
6. Very detailed statistical analysis of the 1969 lottery.
8. Teaching Random Assignment: Do You Believe It Works?.
9. Understanding Probability By Henk Tijms.
11. Sociological and political analysis.
12. The Draft Lottery and Voluntary Enlistment in the Vietnam Era.
Everything carefully packaged in one archive – in Telegram “Math is not for everyone”.
