The Civil Defense Program
In 1940, President Roosevelt feared that without some sort of homeland defense, Americans could be just as volunerable as Europe had been and England seemed to be. The fall of France had destroyed and trapped a large percentage of the British Army, and what survived was rescued by private boats and ships - anything that could float - that could sail quickly across the channel to assist in the daring rescue now known as Dunkirk. Had that happened to the US Army, there would have been no time to rally boats quickly enough to evacuate American troops from the European continent.
So, in May of 1941, Roosevelt created the Office of Civilian Defense to coordinate the millions of people who wished to volunteer to protect their homes and neighborhoods against an invasion. At the peak of the program, more than 10 million people volunteered, mostly between December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) and 1943. As the war in Europe progressed, the threat of invasion seemed less probable, and many of the programs were slowly dismantled until the end of the war, with the exception of black out restrictions, which continued until the war was over.
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There were several committees in the Office of Civilian Defense, and various Corps and roles of responsibility for volunteers. Many of the volunteers were men who were ineligible for military service, although many women volunteered as well. There were messengers, drivers corps, rescue squads, auxilliary police, air raid wardens, auxiliary firemen, fire watchers, bomb squads, road repair crews, decontamination squads, emergency food and housing corps, demolition and clearance crews, medical corps, and nurses aid corps. If the Civil Defense program sounds familiar, that's because many of the air raid shelters and preprations that were made by the Civil Defense office became the basis of some of the cold war nuclear fall out shelters.
While the Civil Defense never prevented a Japanese or German invasion, the program did help fill some of the voids left by servicemen being overseas, such as assisting in natural disasters. It also instilled a certain amount of pride in the men, women and children who weren't overseas fighting and gave them a sense of contribution in the war effort.
