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I was thinking the other day about this. I was draft age near the end of the Viet Nam war, but I cannot remember if I myself actually registered, thus I was never contacted.
Does anyone here remember if there was any legal penalty for failure to register? I did serve 6 years in the Army from '75 thru 81', so it must have been unknown to them or irrelevant.
On March 29, 1975 President Ford signed legislation abolishing the draft. President Carter reinstated it July 2, 1980, retroactively re-established the Selective Service registration requirement for all 18- to 26-year-old male citizens born on or after January 1, 1960. Men born between March 29, 1957, and December 31, 1959 were exempt. You may have been in that select group, based on your service in 1975.
The penalty was significant, $50K, but there were only a couple dozen indictments, mostly self-publicized evaders making a point, or trying to. More importantly, failure to register barred one from federal employment and student loans, as well as many state employment opportunities. I was an ROTC contract cadet on full scholarship at the time, an inactive reserve E-1 for reporting purposes, when it was reinstated, yet I had to register anyway.
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