Sole Survivor Policy

The Sole Survivor Policy or DoD Directive 1315.15 "Special Separation Policies for Survivorship" describes a set of regulations in the Military of the United States that are designed to protect members of a family from the draft or from combat duty if they have already lost family members in military service.

The issue that gave rise to the regulations first caught public attention after the five Sullivan brothers were all killed when the USS Juneau (CL-52) was sunk during World War II. The policy was enacted as law in 1948. No nominally peacetime restriction was in place until 1964 during the Vietnam War; in 1971, Congress amended the law to include not only the sole surviving son or daughter but also any son or daughter who had a combat-related death in the family. Since then, each branch of the military has made its own policies with regard to separating immediate family members.

Before the Sole Survivor Policy was officially implemented in 1948, there were several occasions when sole survivors were excused from active service.

In World War II the Borgstrom brothers, Elmer, Clyde, and twins Rolon and Rulon, were killed within a few months of each other in 1944. Their parents then successfully petitioned for their son Boyd, who was also on active duty, to be released from service. Their sixth son, Elton, who had not yet reached conscription age, was exempted from military service.

The three Butehorn Brothers of Bethpage, New York, Charles, Joseph, and Henry, were all deployed during World War II. After Charles was killed in action in France in 1944 and Joseph was killed in action in the Pacific in 1945, Henry, who was serving with the Army Air Forces in Italy, was ordered home by the War Department. The VFW post in Bethpage is named after their sacrifice.

In the case of the Niland brothers, U.S. intelligence believed that all but one of four siblings were killed in action. It was later discovered that the eldest brother, Technical Sergeant Edward Niland, of the U.S. Army Air Forces, had been held in a prisoner of war camp in Burma. The academy-award winning film Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg, was loosely based on the Niland brothers' story.

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