THEY JUST S A I D Good War or not, thousands of Men not willing to kill but Americans refused wanting to help the war effort voluntarily starve to fight in it themselves for a nutrition study (opposite). At Leyte, By Rachel S. Cox in the Philippines, actor and conscientious objector Lew Ayres tends to wounded NO Japanese prisoners. 58 WORLD WAR II EUGENE SMITH/LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE, MARCH/APRIL 2015 59 WALLACE KIRKLAND/ LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES APAN’S ATTACK on Pearl Harbor and America’s barred conscientious objectors from teaching in their schools. you offer me…for service in the Armed OME 27,000 MEN who were entry into the war galvanized the nation. Officially, Even sports heroes and matinee idols faced derision when Force,” Lowell’s letter began. “You will prepared to resist induction domestic conflict over whether to fight resolved into they did not head for the barracks. Boston Red Sox star Ted understand how painful such a decision is didn’t have to: they washed the tempered elation of common purpose. “We are Williams, wanting to see the 1942 season through, justified his for an American whose family traditions, out after the physical. Of the all in it—all the way,” FDR declared on December 9, 3A draft deferment by claiming to be his mother’s sole sup- like your own, have always found their ful- rest, 25,000 opted for mili- 1941.J “Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the port. Skeptics sneered that Mrs. Williams and her notoriously fillment in maintaining, through respon- Stary duty as uniformed noncombatants, most tremendous undertaking of our American history.” peckish boy, 25, had not seen one another in two years. Wil- sible participation in both the civil and mostly in the Medical Corps. Desmond But not every American was a liams joined the navy reserve and military services, our country’s freedom T. Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist from partner. Even when bright lines later became a flight instructor. and honor.” Lowell believed that what Lynchburg, Virginia, received the Con- POET defined good and evil, freedom When in 1942 actor Lew Ayres, had originated as a war for survival had gressional Medal of Honor for rescuing ROBERT LOWELL and repression, individuality and star of the 1930 antiwar epic All devolved into a campaign to obliterate the scores of wounded under fire on Okinawa The New England enslavement, some men refused to Quiet on the Western Front and the people of Germany and Japan. while serving as a medic with the 77th aristocrat chronicled fight. By August 1945, nearly 70,000 boffo Dr. Kildare franchise, declared Dixon, imprisoned as a youth for Infantry Division. his wartime prison Americans had declared that they himself a philosophical objector, “jumping trains”—hoboing—outside Others wanted to work with the system term for draft resis- tance in a 1959 poem, “by reason of religious training and the industry booed. Raged mogul his native Vicksburg, was 21 when he but rejected noncombatant service on the “Memories of West belief”—as the Selective Training Louis B. Mayer, “You’re through in migrated to Chicago to box—he was grounds that filling a rear-echelon slot Street and Lepke.” and Service Act of 1940 put it— Hollywood!” Theater owners boy- 6’6”, weighed 250 pounds, and sparred simply freed another man to kill. These He later emerged as an early critic of opposed war in any form. Although cotted Ayres’s films. The actor, who with Joe Louis—but quit the ring to sing objectors could serve in the Civilian Public American involvement fully half these men still chose to said bearing arms would cause him the blues. Upon receiving an induction Service, an alternative to military service in Vietnam. He refused to ally formally with serve their country through alter- “to live in a nightmare of hypoc- notice, Dixon declared that he felt no that gave patriotic COs a chance to help antiwar groups, but in native service, that did not stop risy,” briefly worked at a camp for black man owed racist America national their country outside of the armed forces. 1967 joined writer fellow Americans from damning objectors in Oregon, then enlisted service. “Why should I go to work to fight Civilian Public Service arose from the Norman Mailer in protesting the war conscientious objectors (COs) as as an unarmed medic. “The most to save somebody that’s killing me and my country’s World War I experience with at the Pentagon. draft dodgers or worse. Even FDR publicized CO in the country,” people?” he wrote in an autobiography. absolute draft resisters, who numbered A Plymouth, New seemed to equate pacifism with Hampshire, barber in historian Paul Fussell’s words, Police arrested him onstage mid-show. fewer than 2,000 and who, according to cowardice. “There are some timid gave COs a piece Ayres won three battle stars caring Both landed behind bars—Lowell for Selective Service System director Clarence ones among us who say that we of his mind—until for soldiers and civilians under fire a year and a day in New York City and Dykstra, “presented difficulties…far out must preserve peace at any price,” neighbors shamed in New Guinea and the Philippines. in Danbury, Connecticut; Dixon, for 10 of proportion to the numbers involved.” he said in May 1941. him into tolerance. Hollywood rehabilitated the actor, months in a Chicago jail—and they were Lacking an option during 1917 to 1918, “What is the view that permits a who donated his army pay to the not alone. Some 6,000 men did time for the military posted objectors to army man to accept safety instead of ser- American Red Cross. Selective Service Act violations; during the camps, presumably in hopes that in the vice in the midst of a war for survival?” asked New York Times To avoid derision, many men who had identified as paci- war, one man in six in an American prison company of other draftees men disin- writer Robert Van Gelder in a May 1942 magazine article. Van fists in the 1920s and 1930s simply joined up. Others didn’t see was a draft resister. Roughly 1,600 “abso- clined to combat might make themselves Gelder distinguished derisively between nonconformist reli- themselves as having a choice. “To a real degree in 1941,” said lute resisters” refused to cooperate at all. useful somehow or take up the gun after gious pacifists and intellectuals opposing war on political and Steve Cary, a World War II CO who went on to become the The other 4,400 inmates were Jehovah’s all. When “conchies” refused to follow BLUESMAN philosophical grounds. “In the one instance, some of the men president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, “you were a Witnesses seeking exemption from mili- orders, camp staff cut the men’s rations WILLIE DIXON can’t see the world as it is because their eyes are not sufficiently CO knowing that you didn’t have another answer.” tary service not as COs but as ministers, and stuck them in solitary, sometimes The 6’6” Dixon didn’t open,” Van Gelder wrote. “In the second instance a man can’t As an Amish objector told a filmmaker decades later, requests the government denied. inflicting abuse tantamount to torture. mind fighting—at 22 see the world as it is because he himself is in the way.” “World War II was a hard war to be a CO in.” Thousands more refused to fight but With this harsh history in mind, in the he won the Illinois Golden Gloves title for Once the United States was at war, those unwilling to fight worked with the system. Dutiful resisters 1930s the Peace Churches—an umbrella novice heavyweights often bore the blame for the preceding years of vacillation. BJECTORS’ ranks were nearly as diverse filed under Selective Service and Training term for the Society of Friends, Men- and later sparred with “The preachment and the practice of pacifists in Britain and as the army’s. Consider Robert Lowell, a Act Section 5(g), completing DSS 47, “Spe- nonites, and Church of the Brethren— Joe Louis—but refused to fight for a country America were a cause of the World War,” New York Herald Boston poet whose forebears arrived on the cial Form for Conscientious Objectors.” collaborated with the American Civil he thought racist. A Tribune columnist and World War I veteran Walter Lip- Mayflower and included a signer of the U.S. Petitioners had to satisfy draft boards and Liberties Union, the War Resisters League, lifelong singer, he took pmann wrote in August 1943. “They were the cause of the Constitution, and Willie Dixon, a slave’s sometimes appeals panels of their serious- and the Fellowship of Reconciliation to up the bass and was gaining traction as a failure to keep pace with the growth of German and Japanese Ograndson, ex-con, and former pugilist from Mississippi carv- ness by answering 10 requests, starting seek reforms. About 58 percent of objec- member of the Five armaments. They led to the policy of…appeasement.” ing a career as a bassist and songwriter in Chicago. with “Describe the nature of your belief tors had ties with the Peace Churches, and Breezes when he refused induction. Professing conscientious objection could cost a man his job. Having withdrawn from Harvard at his psychiatrist’s urging which is the basis of your claim.” A man found in the commandment “Thou shalt After the war, Dixon Louisiana barred state agencies from employing either COs and finished his degree at Kenyon College, Lowell was 26 when had to explain how he acquired his beliefs, not kill” a statement of purpose.