Sole Survivor Policy
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The Sole Survivor Policy describes a set of regulations in the US military that are designed to protect members of a family from the draft or combat duty if they have already lost family members in military service. This does not protect children without siblings—only those who have already had an immediate family member killed in the line of duty. It furthermore does not apply strictly to the sole surviving son, but to all surviving sons. The need for regulations first caught public attention after the Sullivan brothers were all killed when the USS Juneau (CL-52) was sunk during World War II. Since then, each branch of the military has made its own policies with regard to separating immediate family members. A notable instance of the Sole Survivor Policy is the case of the Niland Brothers, where it was believed that all but one of them was killed in action. It was later discovered that the eldest brother, Edward Niland, an Air Force Lieutenant, had been held in a POW camp in Burma.
