The Recruit
The Recruit Educational Center was a program started by the US War Department in May 1919 at Camp Upton. It provided language instruction and military training for non-English-speaking and illiterate military inductees. The Recruit Educational Center claimed a widened social role for the U.S. Armed Forces during peacetime. It also intervened in the era’s virulent debates over eugenics, national identity, and the place of immigrants in American society.