Marine hat with band above the visorThat meant he benefited from the issue of OLDER DESIGNS in use in the US Army subsequent to WWI and up through about 1943 in many areas.
What you think to be "Marine Corps" materials are actually US Army uniform issue ~ and probably pretty nearly the same as the Marine Corps uniform issue at the time.
This was during the Great Depression. It wasn't so much folks didn't have money, or a place to live, or a job ~ it was that manufacturing had fallen off the planet and there was NOTHING TO BUY that you wanted to buy if you had money if you had a job and a home.
Stuff was in short supply.
My father enlisted BEFORE Pearl Harbor and was issued WWI uniforms for his initial training, and then was issued a more advanced, but doggone it looked like Marine uniforms for his subsequent training as an aircraft engineer. When he finally got to his assignment at Bolling Field he was issued prisoner's dark blue fatigues ~ but he got assigned to a better barracks.
I believe it took Roosevelt's handpicked base commander at Bolling to direct that my father and the others with him be issued standard Army uniforms.
So, hey, yeah, old Dunham was out in the boonies and he was lucky they had a uniform to give him. My father was in an elite outfit that got regular peptalks directly from FDR and he had troubles with uniforms.
If I were you I wouldn't give up my day job!
Marine hat with band above the visor