THE MILITARY MURALISTS

n September 16, 1940, with war seeming inevitable, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective and Training Act, instituting the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. The new law required all men age 21 through 35 to register with their local draft boards. Soon, following the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of young men and women were inducted into the armed forces and sent around the country to train.

To house the new recruits, the U.S. government hastily constructed hundreds of new camps from coast to coast, at a total cost of more than $165 million. Camp Adair in Corvallis, Oregon, established in late 1941, for example, was home to some 1,800 buildings, including 500 barracks, a hospital, a bakery, a bank, a post office, 13 post exchange stores, 5 movie theaters, and 11 chapels. More