U.S. Recruiting, World War II
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Conscription, recruiting and military training went into high gear during World War II. Above is a 1942 photo by LIFE photographer Dmitri Kessel of 18- and 19-year old volunteers being examined.
This 1942 photo shows swim training for a bunch of naked fight cadets in California.
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This 1942 photo from the National Archives shows aviation cadets learning how to swim with their clothes on (simulating what would happen if the plane got shot down) at pre-flight school in Iowa City, Iowa. I'm guessing the guys in the foreground had done the exercise and got out of their wet clothes to be more comfortable while they watched their buddies.
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At the Bainbridge Naval Training Station in Maryland in 1943, an inductee gets a blood test ...
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while another Bainbridge inductee is measured for clothes ...
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and another inductee gets a psychiatric exam, still naked.
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Finally, the Bainbridge inductees take a shower.
The situation in Hawaii was different. At first, the large ethnic Japanese population in Hawaii was suspected of disloyalty. Patriotic Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJA) volunteers joined special military units that were sent to fight against Germany, not Japan, where they distinguished themselves.
This 1943 photo shows AJA volunteers getting a medical examination.
This clip, from a 1944 U.S. Navy training film called "You're Navy Now," show naked recruits walking up stairs, each with a bag that will hold the new uniforms that they will be issued.
This was a military training swimming class led by University of Michigan swimming coach Matt Mann in 1944. Of course, the recruits are naked.
More military swim training with Matt Mann. At first glance the recruits seem to be wearing something, but on closer examination, each man is naked except for a rubber tube around his waist, presumably a flotation device.
Finally, this undated World War II photo shows Army inductees getting their shots. Clothes? You're in the Army. You don't need no stinkin' clothes!
12 comments:
It was still balls-naked in the 60s with draft exams. I don't know about now.
When I was inducted into the army in November of 1970, we were told to strip to our underwear. One guy got yelled at because he was nude.
When I joined the AF in 1971, he process was all pretty much the same, except as a bunch of Flyboys we didn't have any swim training.
I always like these posts.
I wish to lodge an official complaint with your complaints department.
This series does not contain even one "there is always one" Not a single one! How are we supposed to survive without our daily visual nourishment ? :-)
I wonder how careful the photographers were taking pictures versus publishing them in the magazine.
@Anon - Professional photographers took photos of everything, and multiple photos of the same thing, in the hope that a few them would look good. It’s the magazine editors who had to be careful. In the case of LIFE magazine, rear nudity was publishable, but not frontal nudity. However, even a photo with frontal nudity might be published with the nudity cropped out. So there was no reason for photographers to be careful – they just kept snapping away.
As young age I was told a real man isn't affraid to being naked in front of other men, you should get used to it when you join the army.
@Anonymous — I did detect one penis, though very very blurry. In the photo of the men diving into the pool with flotation devices around their waists, zoom in on the dark-skinned man on the far right. I think we can see pubes, penis and testicles? I noticed him especially because he appears to be Black — but I don’t think he could have been as the military was segregated then.
Feel kind of sorry for the kid in photo #6 taking a psychiatric exam, sitting there nude in front of an older fully-dressed superior. Perhaps the wrong person is taking the psychiatric exam.
I took this training in Navy boot camp.
1You jump off the tower.
2You take off your trousers and tie each ankle closed.
3. Catch them full of air, using pants as a flotation device. (about 2/3's of the guys' boxers, came off with the pants.)
Mine didn't come off, but the wet boxers, with gaping flys didn't hide much anyway.
The safety divers, fished out the floating skivvies; reading the stenciled name and throwing them like dodge-balls!
Who said safety training had to be boring?
Oh, as a Navy Photog, there were cocks on the film,
We cropped them out of prints.
The contact prints included them, but they had to be at edges, not a direct pic of a guy, clearly showing his dick. (unless, like I said, it could easily be cropped, without major re-composition.)
I miss that
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