“The Good War And Those Who Refused to Fight It”

CO’s~ conscientious objectors, a ridiculed segment of our society ~especially in times of war. Yellow bellied cowards who took everything from this nation and then refused to give back ~right?

This week I learned different, after the excellent Ken Burns film The War hinted briefly at CO’s contributions to WW2 ,how they were allowed to become ambulance drivers and field medics.

Then the hour long program “The Good War And Those Who Refused To Fight It” shed light on a little known and almost lost part of the WW2 story ~ the courage of the thirty -seven thousand CO‘s who preformed alternative service.

A national system of work camps, administered and set up by the “Peace Churches” (Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren) allowed the CO’s to prove their courage and commitment to the country. They could not kill another human being, but could put their own bodies in harms way ~ by becoming fire jumpers, human guinea pigs, often participating in fatal experiments. Thousands of other CO’s volunteered to go into the insane asylums working to transform these places into the mental institutions of today. Thousands of others ~the hardest group to understand, those led only by ideals , refused to participate in the war machine at all, spending the war years in federal prison and eventually integrating the federal prison system.

“About the only thing these men have in common is their intense conviction that it is wrong to kill a fellow man. And they are building for themselves ,in a Chinese Wall of human spirit,what to most Americans must seem a never-never land,an impossible mirage of peace and brotherly love in a world of war and hate.”– Saturday Evening Post 1940

CPS Camps

A conflicted system was established, between the Selective service, whose goal was to keep the CO’s “out of sight” so as to not hurt wartime morale and the Churches desire to protect it members from the treatment they had receive in WW1.Some 200 other religious organizations participated, representing individuals who had no other common bond than a rejection of war.

In the Civilian Public Service (CPS) the first men arrived believing they would perform six months of hard labor ~nine hours a day, six days a week, having to pay the government $35 a month for room and board, leaving their families in poverty~ instead staying the duration of the war, some even till 1947, two years after the war ended. They preformed “busy work”, frustrated at not being given the promised work “national importance”.

The clientele, the assignees, made the place an absolute zoo. I mean, we had Ph.Ds, we had winners of Fulbright prizes, we had guys who had a third-grade education, we had stockbrokers, we had ballet dancers, we had atheists, we had fundamentalists…every possible kind of human being was there….And that made it a fascinating place to be.
- Steve Cary, WWII CO

These camps became the crucible for many of the techniques that would form the basis of the civil rights movement and the peace movements. In the 152 camps most CO’s planted trees, fought forest fires, built road and dams in remote areas. They built sanitary facilities for communities ridden with hookworm, ran rural medical clinics, cared for juvenile delinquents, and did soil conservation projects and agricultural experiments. Finally they got the promised “national meaningful work” as attendants in mental hospitals, guinea pigs in medical experiments, firefighting smoke jumpers.

Federal Prisons

Some six thousand chose- or were deemed insincere by their draft board- Federal Prison, during WW2 one is six prisoners were draft resisters. A spectrum of Americans were imprisoned ~ 75% were Jehovah’s Witnesses~ and the members of the Peace Churches were joined by Protestants, Catholics, Jews, socialists and anarchists. Large numbers of Puerto Ricans, in protest of their colonial status resisted as did the traditionally pacifist Hopi. 73 Japanese-Americans, interred in the camp at Heart Mountain, refused draft notices and were imprisoned.

CO prisoners were threatened by fellow inmates and guards alike. They suffered solitary confinement, time in total darkness, forced feedings and many found a strength of spirit in their experiences, again going on to develop these non -violent techniques to use in future social movements. In Danbury Prison the hunger strike to integrate succeeded, spread to other Federal Prisons leading to the eventual integration of the entire prison system.

A guard said to one resister “I can’t wait till this God dammed war is over and all I have to deal with are normal prisoners ~ rapists, thief’s, and killers~ people I can understand.”

Mental Health

“It is sort of like a perpetual bad dream.The smells, the sound of the insane voices,the bad equipment.The long dark corridors…it is all very much like a medieval fairy tale of the nether regions.” CO Asa Watkins Oct.14,1942

A significant long term result of the CO’s service was the light they shone on “Bedlam”~ the name of the 1946 shocking expose of the national treatment of the mentally ill. In response to the draconian conditions, the CO’s introduced non-violent methods of patient care, won a law suit in Virginia demanding humane treatment and founded an organization that became the National Mental Health Foundation (NMHF).”The CO is not performing any service for the country” Eleanor Roosevelt had written in her column~ and retracted that statement after she had seen for herself the work done at mental institutions on behalf of the mentally ill by CO’s. In the years after the war she became a major sponsor of the NMHF.

Human Guinea Pigs

“We were very concerned of course that we had been called all kinds of names, yellow bellies, and things like that. I had volunteered for an ambulance driver and got turned down, American Field Service, they said they didn’t want any more COs, they had too many, but I was young and I wanted to show that I was not a coward, so when they offered me this chance of being a guinea pig, it fit right in with my scheme of things of proving that I was willing to take risks on my own body, but I just did not want to kill someone else.”
- CO Neil Hartman

500 CO’s competed to volunteer for dangerous and life threatening medical experiments -helping in finding cure for malaria, infectious hepatitis, atypical pneumonia and typhus. They were injected with live hepatitis, covered in lice and then sprayed with DDT, subjected to high altitudes, extreme temperatures, had their mobility deprived for long periods. At the University of Minnesota young healthy CO’s submitted to starvation ~ the results of which was so severe and long term that they helped inspire the Marshall Plan. A keystone of American foreign policy which set the precedent for helping countries with poverty, disease and malnutrition after war.(To watch a survivor of the starvation trials, view a QuickTime video here.)

In the Field

“Many Americans will die to save this man(medic), who then will save many more Americans lives~ he( medic) should become your target” Japanese Sergeant.

Twenty-five thousand CO’s served as non-combatant medical corpsmen and chaplains. Like the other CO’s they refused to kill but enlisted and wore the uniform. They went, unlike other medics, unarmed into combat. CO Medic Desmond Doss won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his courage under fire.

These CO’s can teach us all something about commitment to one’s principals, about our history and about an idea that refuses to die. Next Monday I will continue with a historical perspective of the CO movement and the contributions it has made.

Tags: Conscientious Objectors

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