16. Voluntary enlistment was eliminated at the end of 1942
On December 5, 1942, via Executive Order 9279, men 18 to 37 years of age were banned from voluntarily enlisting for the duration of the war. The purpose of the ban was to protect the nation’s manpower pool, while at the same time easing the overtaxing of the various military branches’ training facilities. The draft provided the manpower for all branches until the end of the war, the Army demanding a term of duration plus six months, and the other branches offering different terms, though all were for at least as long as the war would run. From December 1942 until the end of World War II, all enlistees in the armed forces first received an invitation from their draft board.
Near the end of 1942 the national lottery system which had been sufficient for peacetime was discarded in favor of a system of local draft boards. By the end of the war there were more than 6,000 such boards in the United States. The use of local boards allowed those who wanted to enlist, but couldn’t due to the Executive Order, to use their influence if they had any to persuade their local draft board to call them up as quotas needed to be met. Few did, at least according to surviving records. By mid-1943 the military was calling up 200,000 men per month and absorbing them into its training facilities, which were likewise expanding exponentially.