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prevent later unnecessary shipments of personnel back and forth across the ocean, issued a regulation in November providing that no women married to a man in the armed forced would be sent overseas, unless she volunteered for such a service.(2)

High Point in WAC Program

January, 1945, when the Air Forces had 42,181 Wacs serving at well over 200 AAF installations throughout the world (nearly 7000 of the women were overseas), marked the high point in the AAF WAC program during World War II. Demobilization plans began in earnest that month; practically all AAF WAC recruiting stopped (1); and by May - VE-day - women were already being returned from overseas and strength was beginning to drop. By August - VJ-day - AAF WAC strength was 1500 less overseas and 5000 less in this country that it had been in January.

Minor developments in the AAF WAC overseas program continued during the early months of 1945. In March the 21st Bomber Command of the 20th Air Force asked for ten WAC officers at its headquarters in the Southwest Pacific; and the Twentieth Air Force itself, with a number of Wacs working in its headquarters in Washington, manifested increasing interest in the WAC program until the summer, when much of its personnel was absorbed into the new command - United States Army Strategic Air Force - which was organized to bring the full weight of 


2. AAF Letter 35-152, Selection of WAC Personnel for Overseas Service, dated 6 November 1944.

1. CF. p. 72.

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