Vietnam Lotteries | Selective Service System (2024)

A lottery drawing – the first since 1942 – was held on December 1, 1969, at Selective Service National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This event determined the order of call for induction during calendar year 1970; that is, for registrants born between January 1, 1944, and December 31, 1950. Re-institution of the lottery was a change from the “draft the oldest man first” method, which had been the determining method for deciding order of call.

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 specified in Selective Service law.

Each table shows all the birth dates in a given year and the lottery numbers assigned to those dates. Read the tables like a multiplication table. At the top of the table are the months of the year. In the first column, on the far left, are the dates of the month. The numbers in the center represent lottery numbers. Thus, the tabular format is set up to show the random selection sequence, by month and day.

The order of selection from among men born on the same date would be determined by the order in which the first letters of their last, first, and middle names were drawn. For example, for Mr. Robert Brown, the alphabetical random selection sequence number for “B” is 25 and “R” is 23.

Alphabetical Sequence Chart