to the draft. By mid-1945, 45,000 uniformed personnel staffed
the railways. Once military personnel were ready to embark
for deployment, government personnel—62,646 military and
77,986 civilians—handled their movement through various
ports.8
Deployment during World War II used sealift. The U.S. Merchant Marine reached a size in World War II that required a
significant recruiting and retention effort. Not only did the
U.S. industrial base churn out 5,592 merchant ships,9 but these
craft used civilian crews, first to supply Britain, and then to ferry
personnel and supplies to U.S. forces (including requisitioned
ocean liners). The Roosevelt administration established the
War Shipping Administration to direct ship operations, which
allocated ships to the Navy and War Departments. The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 supported shipbuilding primarily for
commercial purposes, but included the use of ships as military
and naval auxiliary vessels in a time of war. By 1945, the Army
Transportation Corps operated 186 ocean-going vessels and
managed one seventh of the shipping tonnage that the War
Shipping Administration allocated to the Army. The Shipping
Administration then reallocated priority to the Navy as the war
in the Pacific progressed.
Because their casualty rates exceeded that for most Services, the
Merchant Marines have been waging a protracted campaign
for recognition as veterans.10 At the same time as the attack on
Pearl Harbor, Japanese submar ine I-26 sank its first American
merchant ship, the S.S. Cynthia Olson, a vessel under charter
to the Army Transport Service.11 At the outset of U.S. mobilization, military and naval planners often had various points of
tension with members of the Merchant Marine from perceptions of unreliability to lack of discipline. Although the major
labor unions representing this sector used their control of hiring
to discipline their workforce,12 staff planners advocated militarizing the merchant seamen, particularly for small-boat operations. Placing these 20,000 civilians in uniform was unworkable,
however, as many experienced crewmen could not meet age or
physical requirements for military service.13
As with the railroads, port and shipping services made extensive
use of personnel from port facilities and steamship lines, sometimes commissioning them for service in uniform, sometimes
appointing them government civilians. On December 7, 1941,
the Port Marine Superintendent in San Francisco, Albert Berry,
was immediately called to active duty in the rank of Captain,
Naval Reserve, and assigned to the very post he was filling as a
civilian. “In Navy uniform he served simultaneously with the
Army and the Navy throughout the war.”14 Lewis Lapham,
an executive with the American-Hawaiian Lines, was detailed
temporarily as civilian aide to the Commanding General of the
San Francisco Port of Embarkation, and received a government
check for sixty cents for his first six months as a consultant, and
then received a civil-service appointment.15
32
Intra-theater transport capabilities were also hybrid. In the
build-up for the invasion of Normandy, the British government
deferred to labor unions to not allow U.S. military personnel
to unload their ships, as it was perceived this would mean a loss
of jobs to British port workers, who refused to use labor-saving
devices. But by August 1943, the British conceded the need for
military port-handling capabilities, and the U.S. would eventually have 15 port battalions in Britain. Once Cherbourg was
captured and opened, the Transportation Corps hired French
civilians and used German prisoners of war for port handling.
With the railroads heavily damaged, long-haul transport was
primarily by truck haul. Planners estimated the need for 240
truck companies, but the number was reduced to 160 on the
theater approved troop-list.16
The Transportation Corps deployed Railway units, elements of
which reconnoitered French rail lines from D-Day to D+41,
and a Railway Grand Division and four battalions expanded
rail operations to almost 5,000 miles by October 1944. As the
offensive moved east, the Allied command released rear rail
lines to national rail authorities, which then depended heavily
on civilian personnel.17
Korea and Vietnam
In Korea, the rapid response to the invasion from the North
initially focused on getting troops into the country, and air
accounted for 20–30 percent of troop arrivals. Although air
transport had become viable, the cost differential of shipping
was so great that the air mode accounted for only one percent of
supply shipments. One ton of cargo cost $5,000 to ship by air,
$38 by sea.18 Once supplies reached Korea, through-put lagged
because of congestion and labor issues. Containerized shipping was instituted in this era to minimize pilferage by Korean
stevedores, who were not subject to government supervision in
the ports. Moving cargo to the field required Korean civilians
to build Main Supply Routes for exclusively military traffic. The
transport within Korea was heavily civilian as well, but problems of discipline and control led to militarizing the Korean
Civil Transport Corps.19
The war in Vietnam also depended heavily on civilian contract
labor. Port services were provided through a combination of six
companies from the Vietnamese Army, 15 from the U.S. Army,
and 20 civilian equivalents. Korea’s Han Jin Transportation
Co. was a significant port operator. A projected Transportation
Command to serve the entire Vietnamese theater would have
had 17,000 troops and 12,000 contractors, but inter-Service
rivalries prevented implementation of this concept. The Fifth
Transportation Command arrived in Vietnam in October 1966,
and by late 1968 replaced its 500 military personnel with 700
Vietnamese civilians; two years later, the command transferred
to Vietnamese control. Civilian labor in combat areas was once
again a constraint. The first ship docking at Cam Ranh Bay