Civilian Public Service Research Articles

Review of: <em>John D. Burkholder’s Diaries Written During His Civilian Public Service: Camp 45, Skyline Drive, Luray, Virginia – November 1, 1944 through May 1, 1946</em>—John D. Burkholder

The book opens with a lengthy introduction by the editors to the history of the Civilian Public Service camps during the 1940s that came to be known simply as CPS camps. The diary begins November 1, 1944, a few months after John D. Burkholder started his service on July 4th at Camp 45. The diary ends abruptly on May 1, 1946. I cannot find exactly when his time of service ended but the editor reports that the camp closed at the end of June of the same year. [First paragraph.]

Oregonscape

Oregonscape Matthew Cowan CAMP WYETH, pictured here in 1942, was a civilian public service camp during World War II where conscientious objectors — those who opposed participating in the military due to religious or philosophical beliefs — fulfilled their military service. Founded on November 27, 1941, the camp was also known as Camp #21. Located 14 miles west of the Columbia River Gorge, projects at Camp Wyeth were overseen by the U.S. Forest service and included a variety of maintenance, repair, and cleanup duties in and around the Gorge. Day-to-day work included constructing roads and trails, maintaining camp grounds, fire fighting, and building lookout towers. According to an article published in the Oregonian on March 1, 1942, the camp housed men from thirty different religious denominations, thirty-three occupations, and eight states. One of the most well-known residents to work at the camp was Lew Ayres, an actor known for his role in the film All Quiet in on the Western Front and his marriage to Ginger Rogers. In 1951, Daniel Goldy, regional administrator of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, recommended the establishment of eighteen camps for conscientious in Oregon. He went on to suggest that the Northwest region, including Washington and Idaho, could profitably support twenty-four camps. The cost was estimated at $35,000 for construction of each camp, with operating costs of $30,000 per year. While this recommendation was made to Congress, these camps never materialized in the post-war era. You can read more about Camp Wyeth in Jeffrey Kovac’s “Civilian Public Service Camp #21” entry in The Oregon Encyclopedia (www.oregonencycloopedia.org). Click for larger view View full resolution THIS IMAGE, published in the Oregonian on March 1, 1942, captures a view of Camp Wyeth, which had formerly housed Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) members. At the time the photograph was taken, the camp housed 113 pacifists of military age who were assigned to the camp by draft boards during World War II. The circle on the image is a crop mark made by Oregonian editorial staff in preparation for publication. OHS Research Library, OrHi 71456 [End Page 416] Matthew Cowan OHS Moving Images and Photography Archivist Copyright © 2022 Oregon Historical Society

Review of: <em>Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Small Histories during World War II, Letter Writing, and Family History Methodology</em>—Suzanne Kesler Rumsey

Suzanne Kesler Rumsey’s <em>Blessed Are the Peacemakers</em> is, on the surface, the reconstructed story of the author’s paternal grandparents during World War II. The saga of Benjamin and Miriam Kesler, members of the Dunkard Brethren Church in northern Indiana, in and out of the Civilian Public Service (CPS), is one that will be familiar to most readers of twentieth-century North American Anabaptist history: a young husband called into CPS service as a conscientious objector, the young wife he left behind. What makes it richer is the trove of letters back and forth between the young couple that the author has inherited, as well as the fact that Miriam eventually joined her husband in Rhode Island for the final stage of his service. The letters provide an intimate window into life for nonresistant Christians during World War II. [First paragraph.]

Pacifica Views and Radical Pacifism

Pacifica Views was a four‐page publication initially written and edited by conscientious objectors at the Glendora, California, Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp. During its four years of existence (1943–1947), Pacifica Views provided a lively forum for discussion among radical pacifists. This article provides a brief history of Pacifica Views, sketches of the principal contributors, and a discussion of the major issues discussed in its pages. Finally, it offers an assessment of the long‐term impact of Pacifica Views on peace and social justice movements in the United States.

The Mennonite Mental Health Movement

Historians typically describe the 3000 World War II conscientious objectors who served in American psychiatric hospitals and training schools in the Civilian Public Service (CPS) as "people of conscience." This phrase captures the diverse motivations of the conscientious objectors but neglects the differences among these motivations. Members of several communities served in the CPS, but half of all volunteers in mental health facilities were Mennonites. After the war, only Mennonite CPS veterans engaged their own community in a discussion about their responsibilities to people with mental illness, which led directly to the foundation of eight mental health facilities, seven of which continue to serve people with mental illness. In this review of materials published by Mennonites, we explore the difference that Mennonite religious ideology, especially the ideas of discipleship and nonresistance, made in their response to people with mental illness. Understanding these differences is critical for any attempts to replicate their success in engendering community care, in which direct conversation and encounter are critical.

Review Jeffrey KovacRefusing War, Affirming Peace: A History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks.Foreword by Paul S. Boyer. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009. 192 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $21.95, paper.)

Review Jeffrey Kovac<b><i>Refusing War, Affirming Peace: A History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks.</i></b>Foreword by Paul S. Boyer. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009. 192 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $21.95, paper.)

Relief Efforts Denied: The Civilian Public Service Training Corps and the Starnes Amendment, 1942–43

The Civilian Public Service Training Corps was a programme for conscientious objectors to train for the relief and rehabilitation of the war-ravaged areas during World War II. Although the Historic Peace Churches (Brethren, Mennonite, Society of Friends) and the Selective Service already had a tentative programme in place, Congress eliminated the possibility of wartime relief with the Starnes Amendment to the Military Appropriations Act of 1943. The historical scholarship differs, but an examination of the parties involved reveals that Congress' rejection of the Training Corps stemmed from a number of reasons, which included a desire to use military funds for military purpose and antipathy toward First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her role in American politics.

Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors. By Steven J. Taylor. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009. xviii, 484 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-81560915-5.)

During World War II, twelve thousand draft-eligible men applied for and received conscientious objector exemptions from military service. Some of the objectors joined the Civilian Public Service (cps), where their work ranged from soil conservation to fire fighting to participation (as “human guinea pigs”) in medical tests and experiments. Three thousand filled service positions in public hospitals for the mentally ill and the developmentally disabled. Although the men came from many religious denominations, the majority of conscientious objectors and members of the cps were connected to traditionally pacifist churches: Mennonite, Church of the Brethren, and Society of Friends (Quaker). Using archival records, interviews conducted by himself and others, and secondary sources, Steven J. Taylor has written a magisterial history of a group of young men who called the nation's attention to the horrors inflicted on patients at state mental institutions during the 1940s. Taylor begins with an overview of conscientious objection. During World War I, objectors were socially shunned and often imprisoned. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the pacifist churches, prompted by Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of the 1940 peacetime draft legislation, were planning for conscientious objection. Working through Eleanor Roosevelt and selective service officials such as Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, the churches set up the cps as an alternative system of public work for the objectors, modeled after the depressionera Civilian Conservation Corps. Beginning in 1942, cps men fought forest fires, developed and maintained federal parks, and worked on flood control projects. By 1943, some of the men wanted to carry out more socially constructive work.

Steven J. Taylor . Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors . Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press . 2009 . Pp. xv, 484. $45.00.

Americans usually remember World War II as the good war, a conflict with strictly delineated lines of right and wrong where all citizens participated in the effort to defeat the forces of totalitarianism. And yet, approximately 12,000 Americans refused to join in this conflict on account of their religious or personal pacifist beliefs, instead becoming conscientious objectors (COs) and joining the Civilian Public Service (CPS), a cooperative venture of the federal government's Selective Service System and a consortium of historic peace churches. Of those individuals, 3,000 spent the war years working in institutions, hospitals, and training schools that housed individuals identified as mentally ill or feeble-minded. Although initially established as asylums to provide care and comfort, by 1940 most of these facilities had devolved into custodial warehouses that barely met the basic needs of the thousands of patients who lived there. The work of conscientious objectors at these facilities provided “attempts to do something about the conditions at those institutions” (p. 387). Steven J. Taylor's book traces the experiences of those COs who worked in such institutions, their attempts at systemic reform, and the failure of those reform efforts to make a lasting difference in the institutional system. He concludes, however, that this failure “is not the point of their story. The point is that they tried to make a difference” (p. 395).

The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story by Elliot West

 Reviews Significantly, few studies exist of camp life during the Civilian Public Service period. Kovac’s work helps fill this gap by documenting the leisure,work,and community-oriented activities of the conscientious objectors assigned to this remote corner of the World War II home front as well as the deeply held moral and religious convictions that put them on the margins of American society.(A regrettable editing error in the book’s documentation , however, is the omission of all endnote citations for chapter 5.) The Cascade Locks setting, though mostly out of the public eye, drew unusual press attention for several reasons, and Kovac tells these stories well. In 1942, for example, the Hollywood film star Lew Ayres (well-known for his roles in All Quiet on the Western Front and other movies) came to Cascade Locks as a conscientious objector before transferring and becoming an army medic. Also early in the camp’s history, George Yamada, a young Japanese-American conscientious objector, arrived at Cascade Locks prior to receiving an order for transfer to an internment camp under the War Relocation Authority. The Cascade Locks men’s protestations about the pending forced removal of Yamada from their midst demonstrated their concern for justice and willingnesstoconfrontgovernmentalauthority in extraordinary times. The author, Jeffrey Kovac — who himself took a conscientious objector position during the Vietnam War — writes from a strongly sympathetic perspective. His purpose is to “tell the story of those who chose peace, to honor their memory and to inspire future generations to make that same choice” (p. 22). This highly readable book will appeal to an audience of scholars and students interested in peace and religious history, in World War II home front history, in the history of Oregon and the Northwest,and inAmerican social and political thought. Rachel Waltner Goossen Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story by Elliott West Oxford University Press, New York, 2009. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 432 pages. $27.95 cloth. College students occasionally ask why the second half of the introductory U.S. history course generally starts in 1877. What is so magical about that date that it dictates how historians structure their textbooks and classes? The conventional answer highlights the end of Reconstruction in the South — certainly a major watershed — but 1877 was significant in other ways as well, including the dramatic events Elliott West recounts in The Last Indian War. Many readers will already know the basic outlines of the story, for the Nez Perce War is perhaps the most thoroughly chronicled subject in Native American history after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Some scholars may even wonder (as I did initially) why we need another book on the non-treaty Nez Perces and their heroic running battle against the U.S. Army. West has an answer for them, too. Placing the war in the context of broader changes sweeping the nation, he presents it as “a chance to rethink how America was remade in the middle of the nineteenth century” (p. xviii). Between 1845 and 1877, West argues, the United States underwent a “Greater Reconstruction ”during whichAmericans confronted fundamental questions about the nature of the union, the extent of federal power, and the boundaries of national citizenship (p.xx).The Trans-Mississippi West and its Native peoples, as much as the South and its slave society,were drawn into these debates and transformed by their violent resolution. If the Nez Perce conflict was not technically the “Last Indian War,” it nevertheless heralded a new national order and thus “has much to say about its time and about how that time helped make the America we know” (p. xxiii). West divides his narrative into three parts. The first sketches the aboriginal homeland  OHQ vol. 111, no. 2 and culture of the Nimiipuu (‘Real People’); their early encounters with Euro-American explorers, fur traders, and missionaries; and the treaties of 1855 and 1863 that left the nontreaty bands outside reservation boundaries . Despite many provocations during this period, even those groups remained peaceful until Euro-American settlers and the government demanded their removal in 1877. Part 2 describes the outbreak of the war and the Nez Perces...

Refusing War, Affirming Peace: A History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks by Jeffrey Kovac

Refusing War, Affirming Peace: A History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks by Jeffrey Kovac

Confrontation at the Locks: A Protest of Japanese Removal and Incarceration during World War II

CHARLES DAVIS _AND JEFFREY KQVAC Confrontation at the Locks A ProtestofJapaneseRemoval and Incarceration during WorldWar II IT ISAMEASURE OF THE IDEALISM oftheWorldWarII conscientious objectors (COs) that J. Henry Dasenbrock, the first assignee to Civilian Public Service (CPS) Camp 21 at Cascade Locks, Oregon, reported early.1 Dasenbrock had received a letter early in the fall of 1941 ordering him to report to the camp on December 5. The camp director was Rev. Mark Y. Schrock, he learned, a Church of the Brethren minister from Olympia, Washington, whom Dasenbrock had known while growing up in Idaho. Volunteering to help Schrock set up the new camp, Dasenbrock slept on the couch of Schrock's home inOlympia for amonth or so before heading toCascade Locks in lateNovember to prepare the camp for the first arriv als. Schrock had spent several months searching for a site for the firstCPS camp in the Pacific Northwest and had settled onWyeth, about sixmiles east of Cascade Locks, because of the excellent facilities of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp there. Itwas relatively easy to get there by rail and bus, and therewas thewealth of Forest Service work projects to keep COs busy in the nearby Mt. Hood National Forest. Schrock also may have been impressed with the beauty of the landscape along Gorton Creek, where the camp was sandwiched between the Cascade Mountains and the Columbia River. The camp population, which eventually reached two hundred men, was diverse? in their religious beliefs, their educational backgrounds, and their financial and family circumstances. The one thing themen had in common OHQ vol. 107, no. 4 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society World War II conscientious objectors livedbeside theriverin the midst of the forest coveredbasalt cliffs of theColumbia RiverGorge at this Civilian Public Service camp near Cascade Locks, Oregon. was that they refused to serve in themilitary either as combatants or non combatants. All of them had been subjected to conscription, and theywere sensitive to the power of the state.Many also shared a strong commitment to social justice. For some, that commitment came from their religious background; for others, ithad a more philosophical and political origin. Because of their common cause, taking principled actions against what the men considered to be social injustice became an essential part of the CPS experience formany COs. In the summer of 1942, themen of CPS Camp 21mounted one of the few sustained protests against the federal government's incarceration of Japanese citizens and aliens during World War II.2Their protest, sparked by an order to remove George Kiyoshi Yamada, a CO at Camp 21, to an in ternment camp illuminates the history of the conscientious objector system during World War II and highlights a little-known example of resistance to the government's racist relocation policy. This account of the resistance to Davis and Kovac, Confrontation at theLocks 487 Yamada's removal isbased on amanuscript by the late Charles Davis, who was a CO at Camp 21 and a participant in the protest. CIVILIAN PUBLIC SERVICE had itsorigininavisittoPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 10,1940, by seven representatives of theChurch of theBrethren, theReligious Society of Friends (Quakers), and the Mennonite Church ? a group also known as the historic peace churches.3 Even though thewar inEurope was in itsearly stages, theUnited Stateswas moving rapidly into prewar preparation, and the sevenmen wanted to express their concern that, should war come, adequate provisions be made for conscience. Their proposal ? modeled on the successful system inGreat Britain? called for alternative civilian service and complete exemption for absolutists, those men who were unwilling to cooperate with any system of conscription.4 Although thepresident was affable and thedelegationleft hisoffice feeling that themeeting was a success, a sustained lobbying effortby the churches was required to persuade Congress to include the essence of their proposal into the pending bill. Ultimately, the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940 provided for those persons who, "by reasons of religious training and belief, are conscientiously opposed to participation inwar in any form" to be placed either in noncombatant roles in themilitary or assigned to do work of national importance under civilian control.5 The act provided no exemption for absolutists and no provision for nonreligious objectors...

"The Utmost Human Consequence": Art and Peace on the Oregon Coast, 1942-1946

KATRINE BARBERAND ELIZA ELKINS JONES "The Utmost Human Consequence" Art and Peace on the Oregon Coast, 1942-1946 It seems tome that theartist's situation ina community can bestbe understoodwhen compared with thatof the conscientious objector.Both workfor ends thatare of the utmosthuman consequence, but bothdo them in ways thatconflict with currentsocial mores. Societywants entertainment,distraction; theartist insistson giving itreality, charged, concentratedand inescapable. The c.o., ifhe is tobe effective, must become a revolutionist.... He hasfashioned upon an idea that isdynamic, visionary,and he will not be shakenfrom it. He runs squarely into theutmost social resistancebecause society does not understand, does not know its needs, cannot see so far, doesnt care; cant tellhow. So with theartist. ? William Everson1 THE 1950s PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS a smallgroupof people inSan Francisco protesting the atomic bomb. On the left isKermit Sheets, a gay man in his thirties, carrying a sign with the plea "and among these Life," a phrase from theDeclaration of Independence.2 On the right isManche Langley Harvey, an activist with two daughters who was close to ending her marriage to a conscientious objector (CO) who suffered from alcohol ism.3The two protesters had known each other formore than ten years, havingfirst met during WorldWar II at a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp near Cascade Locks, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge. Harvey, a young pacifist who had grown up in Portland, had discovered the CPS camp by chance and became friends with some of theCOs therewho were also artists, including Sheets, who was from California. In October 1942, Sheets relocated toCamp 56 on theOregon coast nearWaldport, where he 510 OHQ vol. 107, no. 4 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society Kermit Sheets,Bruce Bishop, andManche LangleyHarvey protest theatomic bomb inSan Francisco during the1950s.Sheets andHarvey had met at a Civilian Public Service camp inOregon duringWorld War II. joined other transfers and artists already atCamp 56 to establish a Fine Arts Program ? a loose association of people that had no specific agenda but enabled COs to transfer from other CPS camps for the purpose of creating, studying, and performing art together.Under the auspices of the camp's Fine Arts Program, they discussed the relationship between pacifism and art as they produced plays, wrote and published poetry, played and composed music, painted and sculpted, and designed and made myrtlewood bowls and other objects. "In being pacifists," one CO at Waldport wrote, "we did not forgetwe were also artists."4 Shortly after Sheets transferred from Cascade Locks, Manche Harvey also moved to the Waldport CPS camp, where worked with the Fine Arts Program. She had accepted an invitation from friends to stop at Camp 56 Barber and Elkins ?ones,Art and Peace on theOregon Coast 511 As part of theFine ArtsProgram at CPS Camp 56,Manche Langley (Harvey), Enoch Crumpton, Kermit Sheets,andWilliam Eshelman performedAria Da Capo, byEdna St.VincentMillay, on September 22,1944. and help put on a play and decided to stay. For the next year, she lived at or near the camp, socializing, helping produce plays and work the printing press, and doing secretarial work for the Fine Arts Program. The camp was mostly populated by men, of course, but Harvey remembered "lots of fe males around," including "several wives" who she "became very close friends with." Camp 56's substantial female population was not unusual inCPS. Historian Rachel Waltner Goosen estimates that "two thousand women, and perhaps half asmany children, lived inand near Civilian Public Service camps" across the country.5 When Kermit Sheets andManche Harvey were photographed protesting the atomic bomb in the 1950s, their liveswere still focused on community art production. Shortly after the end of thewar, theyhad joined other pacifists who had been conscripted duringWorld War II,political radicals, and artistic visionaries inSan Francisco, where theyproduced plays at a cooperative the ater, created avant-garde films, and protested war and injustice as part of the OHQ vol.107, no. 4 city's renaissance art scene. Throughout their adult lives, Sheets and Harvey continued towork and socialize with people who had been involved in the fine arts study group at Waldport, all ofwhom were connected to a broader history of national and international political resistance. Neither Harvey or Sheets became...

William Stafford’s Down in My Heart: The Poetics of Pacifism and the Limits of Lyric

This essay argues that William Stafford's Down in My Heart, his memoir of his life in the Civilian Public Service Camps as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, anticipates the central questions of his pacifist poetry. In particular, the memoir stages the drama between Stafford's poetics—manifested in a vision of the beloved community, where consensus decision‐making is essential and accommodation to the State necessary—and the press of history, war, and absolute resistance. Stafford's memoir informs and exposes the limitations of Stafford's poetry. On the one hand, it anticipates Stafford's preoccupation with building an imagined community that respects solitude and difference. On the other hand, it also succeeds in creating a dialogic tension between nonviolent dissent and absolute resistance in ways that Stafford's poetry does not. The memoir, therefore, is a crucial text of Stafford poetic project and represents an important moment in the history of nonviolent literature.

`Free American Political Prisoners': Pacifist Activism and Civil Liberties, 1945-48

After World War II, the Committee for Amnesty led a three-year campaign to obtain amnesty for the 6,000 US conscientious objectors (COs) sentenced to prison for their refusal to participate in the war. In addition, the Committee for Amnesty sought to win freedom for those COs who remained in prison long after the war ended. As convicted felons, prison COs were `second-class citizens' deprived of their full civil rights, including the right to vote. During World War II, social actionist COs staged dramatic work and hunger strikes to protest racism, censorship, conscription, and the myriad policies that dehumanized prison and gutted the original vision of Civilian Public Service, a program of alternative nonmilitary service. After the war, these radicalized COs applied the techniques of Gandhian nonviolent direct action, developed in prison and Civilian Public Service camps, to advance peace and justice - most notably in the anti-war, civil rights, environmental, anti-nuclear, and civil liberties movements. The amnesty campaign, which was initiated by prison COs and their friends and relatives, represented one of the first examples of this militant postwar CO activism. The Committee for Amnesty demonstrates the impact of World War II COs on the War Resisters League and the postwar radical pacifist movement. These COs - militant, absolutist-orientated, creative, and committed to direct action - shaped the methods and goals of the amnesty campaign, dividing the War Resisters League in the process. The amnesty campaign illustrates the postwar grass-roots social activism of World War II COs, their contribution to civil liberties and social reform movements, and their impact on the postwar radical pacifist movement.

Experimental Americans: Celo and Utopian Community in the Twentieth Century

From colonial times to the present, the United States has been home to a steady stream of utopian experimental communities. In Experimental Americans, George L. Hicks takes us inside one of the longer-lived of such communities, Celo Community in western North Carolina, to explore the dynamics of intentional communities in America. Founded in 1937 by Arthur Morgan, first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Celo (pronounced see-lo) established its own rules of land tenure and taxation, conducted its internal business by consensus, and did not require its members to accept any particular ideology or religious creed. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Celo and among its local neighbors, consultation of Celo's documentary records, and interviews with ex-members, Hicks traces the Community's ups and downs. Attacked for its opposition to World War II, Celo was revived by pacifists released from prisons and Civilian Public Service camps after the war; debilitated in the 1950s by bitter feuds with ex-members, it was buoyed up in the 1960s by the radical enthusiasm of new currents in the nation. Hicks assesses the Community's success in creating alternatives to mainstream social relations and examines the interactions between Celo and its neighboring community. He considers variations in paths taken by utopian communities, with a look at a close cousin of Celo, the Macedonia Community in Georgia. He also discusses the Community's post-utopian phase, marked by a shift in the late 1970s from social goals to straightforward land management. While utopian communities might hope to secede from American society in varying degrees and to institute new and improved cultural models, nonetheless they express in many ways the attempt--characteristic of the nation itself--to balance individualism and egalitarianism. By providing the context, utopian and conventional, within which Celo and other experimental communities emerge and change, Experimental Americans illuminates an ongoing encounter with persistent tensions and contradictions in America's cultural postulates.

The Women's Interwar Peace Movement

Rachel Waltner Goossen. Women Against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and. Gender on the American Home Front, 1941-1947. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xiii + 180 and biblio- graphy and illustrations. Linda K. Schott. Reconstructing Women's Thoughts: The Womett's Inter- national League for Peace and Freedom Before World War II. Stanford: Stan- ford University Press, 1997. Pp. ix + 211 and illustrations. Linked together by similar subjects—women pacifists in the United States during or prior to World War II—both of these books are useful for an understanding of the interwar peace movement. Schott's study of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) should be read in conjunction with Carrie Foster's 1995 work on that group, The Women and the Warriors, and the 1993 biography of long-time WILPF leader Mildred Scott Olmsted by Margaret Bacon entitled One Woman's Passion for Peace and Freedom, both published by Syracuse University Press, as well as Harriet Hyman Alsono's two seminal works, The Women's Peace Union and the Outlawry of War, 1921-1942 (Knoxville, 1989) and Peace as a Women's Issue (Syracuse, 1993). Goossen's study of women in Civilian Public Service (CPS) nicely complements earlier works on conscientious objectors (CO's) like Cynthia Eller's conscientious Objectors and the Second World War (Praeger, 1991) with its religious and moral emphasis.

Women against the good war: conscientious objection and gender on the American home front, 1941-1947

During World War II, more than 12,000 male conscientious objectors seeking alternatives to military service entered Civilian Public Service to do forestry, soil conservation, or other 'work of national importance.' But this government-sponsored, church-supported program also attracted some 2,000 women--most of whom were part of Mennonite, Amish, Brethren, or Quaker families with deeply held antiwar beliefs--to 151 alternative service locations across the country. Rachel Waltner Goossen tells the story of these women against the 'good war,' women who identified themselves as conscientious objectors. Despite cultural hostility and discriminatory federal policies, they sought to demonstrate their humanitarian convictions by taking part in Civilian Public Service work. Based on little-known archival sources as well as oral history interviews and questionnaire responses, Goossen's study reveals the extent to which these women's religious and philosophical beliefs placed them on the margins of American society. Encouraged by religious traditions that prized nonconformity, these women made unusual choices, questioned government dictums, and defied societal expectations, all of which set them apart from the millions of Americans who supported the war effort.

"We have Just Begun to Not Fight": An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service during World War II.

"We have Just Begun to Not Fight": An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service during World War II.

“We Have Just Begun to Not Fight”: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service during World War II, by John O'Sullivan and Heather T. Frazer, comps.

“We Have Just Begun to Not Fight”: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service during World War II, <i>by John O'Sullivan and Heather T. Frazer, comps.</i>