Here on the Edge: How a Small Group of WWII Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream by Steve McQuiddy

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 115, no. 3 The final two chapters offer more than a standard conclusion and reiteration of main points. Jacob elaborates on Yakama decolonization praxis, places those efforts within an indigenous-rights framework, and offers suggestions for those engaged in the work of cultural revitalization.Three points seem most salient in these chapters: first,her discussion of discipline,responsibility,respect,humility,and care for the past at the center of Yakama identity ; second, her analysis of gender and gender equity; and third, her notion that anyone can do decolonization work. These are powerful notions at the heart of the book. Michelle Jacob’s Yakama Rising is an excellent contribution to the First People Series, and the University of Arizona Press should be praised for facilitating its publication. It will be of great interest to undergraduates and graduates in American Indian and Native studies as well as to community activists and policy makers. Jeffrey P. Shepherd University of Texas at El Paso Here on the Edge: How a Small Group of WWII Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream by Steve McQuiddy Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2013. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 336 pages. $24.95 paper. Here on the Edge is an engaging and beautifully written history. The “edge” McQuiddy documents is the work of members of the fine arts and tree-planting work camp of World War II objectors at Camp #56 in Waldport, Oregon. The move to the mainstream he traces is of Waldport’s painters, musicians, writers, printers and actors descending on post-war San Francisco and mixing with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.Together,the Beats andWaldport’s “conchies”(conscientiousobjectors)shapedthe San Francisco arts renaissance and, ultimately, the 1960s counterculture where pacifism, as argued by McQuiddy, became mainstream. Although I have some background in this topic, I learned much from McQuiddy’s extensive research and capable handling of complex historical strands. Even more, I was deeply moved by the story of resistance and transformation McQuiddy has spun from oral histories, books, articles, manuscripts, and original interviews. He captures the stunning intentionality of people with outrageous goals and their unlikely impact. It made me ache for a similar possibility. But that is the book’s larger point. Based on conviction and hard work, these people created their own possibilities under seemingly impossible conditions. As the book sketches, the WWII alternative service camps were products of the deplorable treatment of war resisters during WWI. The Historic Peace Churches (Brethren, Mennonite, and Quaker) worked with the U.S. government and pressed for change, resulting in the recognition of a conscientious objector status and the establishment of alternative service camps.The government provided the 150 sites, often former New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps, and assigned work duties. Everything else for the 12,000 men classified and assigned by the Selective Service to“do work of national importance”was paid for and organized by the Peace Churches — their food, clothes, education , entertainment, everything (p. 14). It was an unlikely and at times unwieldy alliance, made more so by the occupants themselves. The camp“inmates”were drawn from all walks of life, all parts of the country, unified only in their opposition to war.Camp #56 was distinctively diverse. Most men were fresh off their family farms, having gained their convictions from their religious training.But a strategic few Reviews  atWaldport were accomplished poets,painters, or musicians, often secular or political in their opposition to war and dedicated to pursuing their arts for the purpose of peace. McQuiddy details the inevitable rubs between the groups but captures their dynamics,unlikely alliances, and mutual learning, an important topic in its own right. The Waldport artists decided it was not enough to simply do their assigned treeplanting work and bide their time until the war’s conclusion.Led by poetWilliam Everson, the group focused on what they and the world would need when the violence ended. Working fifty hours a week planting trees, fighting fires, and crushing rock, by night the Fine Arts Group produced a body of work — paintings, poetry, books, plays — that influenced other camps and the outside...