7 Ways Americans Avoided the Draft During the Vietnam War HISTORY

Vietnam Lotteries. A lottery drawing - the first since 1942 - was held on December 1, 1969, at Selective Service National Headquarters in Washington, D.C.. There were 366 blue plastic capsules containing birth dates placed in a large glass container and drawn by hand to assign order-of-call numbers to all men within the 18-26 age range.. The remaining capsules were drawn by youth delegates who had been selected for that purpose from around the country. The last date drawn was June 8, which was assigned draft number 366. This initial Vietnam draft lottery drawing was on December 1, 1969. The first birth date drawn that night, assigned the lowest number, "001," was September 14.

Almanac: The 1969 draft lottery 01:55. On December 1st, 1969, America's first military draft lottery since World War II was held. With the war in Vietnam as a backdrop - and the futures of some.. Between 1954-1964, from the end of the Korean War until the escalation in Vietnam, the "peacetime" draft inducted more than 1.4 million American men, an average of more than 120,000 per year. As part of their Cold War mission, many state universities required ROTC training by male students, although campus protests caused administrators to.