I was talking to my mother about her father's military service during the WW2 Era. He had an older brother that was drafted into the navy in 1945, and supposedly did nothing more than patrol the pacific ocean while the war was ending/over.
My mother, however, doesn't believe that the us navy has ever drafted recruits into their service, and all I can find is blanket information on the selective training and service act of 1940 that doesn't explicitly say what all branches of service were involved.
My questions are, did the navy draft recruits into service during the WW2 era, and in general, if you were drafted into the war, could you choose what branch of service you wanted to join, or was it chosen for you?
Thanks so much
Not to discourage further responses, but I answered a similar question here.
The original Selective Training and Service Act as passed in 1940 only applied to the Army, but President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9279 in December 1942, making the Selective Service System the sole procurement method for men aged 18 to 37 for the U.S. armed forces; concurrent with this order, the Army and Navy decreed that only men aged 18 to 37 would be acceptable for induction, although men aged 17 and over 37 were permitted to voluntarily enlist or be commissioned in certain circumstances, the former because they were not yet legally subject to Selective Service. The Navy made a much greater effort to obtain 17 year old volunteers than did the Army, due in part to the fact it was not subject to an Army-only legislative restriction implicitly forbidding the use of these men on active duty, and met a significant portion of its manpower needs in this way.
After Selective Service jurisdiction was expanded to both the Army and Navy, an option existed, implemented in several different ways at different times, where certain recruits were permitted to choose their branch of service at induction. Final assignment in most cases depended upon the needs of the service at any particular time.