1942: Office Of Civilian Defense

Development of Organization.

The United States Office of Civilian Defense is charged with a double duty: to prepare the civilian population to cope with the emergency of enemy attack, and to forward all civilian programs and campaigns which will help carry the war to the enemy.

As long ago as May 1940, when the war clouds of the world were drifting toward the United States, President Roosevelt approved a National Defense Advisory Commission. Members of the Commission were authorities on industrial materials and production, employment, farm products, price stabilization, transportation, and consumer protection.

Then, after Hitler's invasion of France and the Low Countries, and the rapid spreading of World War II, the present Office of Civilian Defense was created. The President's executive order of May 20, 1941, declared, among other things, that the Office of Civilian Defense should 'serve as the center for the coordination of Federal defense activities which involve relationships between the Federal Government and state and local government ... and facilitate such relationships between such units of government and the agencies of the Federal Government in respect to defense problems.'

Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York City was appointed Director of the Office of Civilian Defense. Although the United States was not at war, the main lines of civilian protection were laid, and many towns and cities in the country set up protective organizations with the advice and counsel of the United States Office of Civilian Defense. Regional Offices of Civilian Defense, responsible to the United States Office, were established in the nine Army Corps areas. State offices were set up by the authority of the various governors, many of them even before the OCD was started. The state organizations are autonomous, but in most cases work closely with the Regional offices, and, through them, with the United States Office.

The morning of Dec. 8 saw thousands of volunteers lined up before the offices of Civilian Defense Councils in every part of the country. Hundreds of new local councils were started, and enrollment went on at a rapid rate for several weeks. In the United States Office, duties expanded at a proportional rate, so that a full-time Director, James M. Landis, Dean of the Harvard Law School, was appointed on Feb. 11, 1942. He had previously held the positions of Director of the First Region of Civilian Defense and later, Executive Officer of the national office.

To answer, at least in part, the unparalleled demands which were being made upon the OCD for fire-fighting equipment and other materials with which to meet attack by air, Congress appropriated $100,000,000. The equipment which this money buys is distributed to local Defense Councils, the first allotments naturally going to coastal areas and to strategic centers of greatest war production, where the dangers of attack are most imminent.

Protective Program.

One of the first facts driven home by the raid of December 7 was that the United States was a good ten years behind Japan and Germany in preparation against enemy attack. The prime task of the OCD then was to make America, at least the strategic centers of production in America, less vulnerable to attack. By November 1942, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, there were 12,000 local Defense Councils in the United States, an average of four councils for each county in every one of the forty-eight states. By September 1942, over 5,500,000 persons had been trained in one or another of seventeen different units of protection.

Defense Training.

This training, which leads to membership in the U. S. Citizens' Defense Corps, usually includes from ten to twenty hours of instruction in First Aid, blackout regulations, fire-fighting, and other basic protective duties. After taking the prescribed courses, trainees become air-raid wardens, fire watchers, auxiliary police and firemen, members of road repair, rescue, demolition and clearance units, and workers in ten other units of the civilian protection organization.

Other Protective Services.

The hazard of sabotage to factories, munitions plants, and war-production industries generally is being met by the Facility Security Program. This program, created by executive order of the President on May 20, 1942, directs the OCD to assure the development and execution of protective measures against sabotage for many of the nation's essential facilities. It supplements the protective programs of the Army, Navy, and Federal Power Commission, and correlates with them the anti-sabotage activities of other government agencies.

In wartime, the danger of forest fires is increased by the possibility of sabotage and enemy attack by air. Moreover, the usual forest fires caused by accident or carelessness are far more serious in wartime than ordinarily because of irreparable damage to timber needed in war production and war housing. The OCD Forest Fire Fighters Service has been established to safeguard forest lands and other timber resources, to prevent and control fires which might endanger these resources, and to minimize the effects of any such fires. In this work the OCD is not duplicating the activity of any existing agency, but is recruiting volunteers and cooperating with the forest fire fighting agencies of the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture as well as with state forestry officials and private protective organizations.

Aerial Guard.

The OCD has an aerial guard. This is the Civil Air Patrol, which consists of units of volunteer civilian fliers. Sixty thousand strong, they are organized in every section of the country to perform valuable work. Their various activities include missions for the Army and Navy, anti-submarine observation and coastal patrol flying, courier and ferry service, and forest patrol. These volunteers receive a per diem allowance for expenses while on active duty and a minimum hourly plane rental.

In answer to a request from the War Department, local Defense Councils have supplied civilian volunteers to assist the Army in the operation of its Aircraft Warning Service. This service is developed to detect and report enemy air raids. Acting on information supplied by the system, our own fighter planes will be able to locate and attack any hostile raiders that may come, and the military authorities will be able to warn communities in the path of the invading bombers. The volunteer civilians in the Aircraft Warning Service under the direct supervision of the Army, are working as clerks, plotters, tellers, administrators, teletype operators, filterers, messengers, PBX and phone operators, typists, wire chiefs, and message center chiefs. They have freed over 500,000 soldiers and their officers for more active types of service.

Another military necessity performed by Civilian Defense workers is the enforcement of the dimouts on the nation's coastlines. If Army personnel had to do this vital work, another 1,000,000 or more men in the armed forces would be diverted from the field.

Civilian War Services.

With its protective program well under way, the OCD has followed the example of our nation's armed forces and taken the offensive. The Mobilization or Civilian War Services Branch of Civilian Defense has as its main purpose the speeding of those civilian activities which will help win the war.

By October 1942, over 4,000,000 men and women volunteers were enrolled for work in Civilian War Services. These volunteers are first trained in an introductory course of instruction in the community war program, then given a special course in the particular type of work which they choose.

For example, when there is a need for trained personnel to care for the children of working mothers, the personnel is selected from the rolls of the volunteer office. A local kindergarten or child welfare agency supplies an expert to train these volunteers. Similarly, offices of local Defense Councils supply volunteer workers to help carry out mass immunization and health programs. Volunteer workers, trained as auxiliary nurses, home-nursing teachers, laboratory assistants, medical social-service assistants, and helpers in every field of therapy and public health, are seeing to it that the country's health services are expanded, not restricted, and are meeting increased wartime demands.

In cities where war orders have skyrocketed production, the influx of workers has in some instances doubled the population. The problem of housing that has resulted from these crowded conditions is the most serious ever faced in this country. Attendant upon it are the closely related problems of bad health, dislocations of families, and juvenile delinquency. Civilian Defense volunteers are supplying Federal housing agencies with volunteers who make surveys of houses, apartments, and rooms, establish centers to house incoming workers, help families find needed furniture and get adjusted to their new environment. These services directly contribute man-hours to war production.

A large number of Civilian Defense volunteers work in the field of education. They help in public schools by keeping records, assisting with lunch rooms, and performing other time-consuming duties, freeing trained teachers to give full time to their special teaching job. For adults, they organize the classes needed and find the best teachers for them.

Volunteers at home are further doing their part to fight the war by conducting salvage campaigns, arranging car-sharing clubs, teaching the nutrition value of foods, establishing recreation centers for workers and for servicemen, carrying on war savings campaigns, enlisting helpers for needed farm labor.

A great deal of the work done by Civilian Defense volunteers is in cooperation with other government agencies. When the Office of Defense Transportation puts on a car-sharing drive, the volunteer offices of the local Defense Councils throughout the nation provide needed manpower for the drive. Similarly, the programs of the Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services, the U. S. Public Health Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Industrial Conservation and others use manpower recruited locally by the Civilian Defense organization.

All these programs, which must succeed if we are to conduct a successful war, require literally millions of willing and able workers.

The Block Plan.

Civilian Defense is already organized by region, state, county, and town. But abroad this war is being fought block by block, and this is how it must be fought here. OCD is encouraging local Defense Councils to develop a type of organization which if promoted here can bring virtually every family in America into the fight. This is the Block Plan.

The key person in this organization is the Block Leader. It is his responsibility to enlist every one of the families in his neighborhood into active participation in civilian war services. He explains the need for the salvage or war-savings drive, answers the family's questions, and tells them how and when to act. He is the line officer. Each family is a squad and each block a battalion in the war of the home front.

This plan works. In Chicago, where it has been put into operation, 1,000,000 persons have been enrolled for civilian war services. In every one of the city's 1,500 blocks, leaders chosen from all occupations and walks of life — retired army officers, housewives, police captains, businessmen — are obtaining splendid cooperation from their neighbors. Nine specific civilian war activities, including salvage, conservation, nutrition, and defense savings, are under way in each block.

There is hardly anything that civilians can do to help win the war that cannot be carried out through the Block Plan. Surveys by Block Leaders can determine the number of spare rooms available for incoming war workers, the number of children needing day care, and the number of children, mothers, old, and sick who would have to be taken care of in case of emergency.

The Block Leaders can also make surveys to find out the number of women available for training and placement in war industries, or the number of people available for emergency farm labor, and the number able to join in car-sharing plans, when Council committees ask for this information.

In Syracuse, N. Y., within a single week, leaders devoted some 18,386 hours to interviewing 27,500 families. This amount of time would require a force of 2,398 workmen, each putting in an eight-hour day. If paid for at the rate of fifty cents an hour, it would involve a labor cost of $9,193. As a matter of fact, these 18,000 hours of volunteer labor cost the Defense Council of Syracuse only $28.50, which was the total cost of mimeographed material, record cards, and every item for the project.

The local Defense Council through the Block Plan, has the duty of reaching every possible source of manpower to do these war jobs, women, young people, old people, minority groups. No group can be overlooked. The local Defense Council can and should act as a reservoir of human energy upon which the government can call to carry out any task which can help speed our victory in this war. It is not only a defensive force, it is the greatest civilian offensive army ever organized in the history of our country.