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91 C H A P T E R 6 Democratic Sausage Making “attention portland newspapers! Contact editor of Waldport paper for information concerning activity of conscientious objectors there!” So came this warning from national radio commentator and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell during his popular weekly program in January 1944. Winchell was huge, heard by millions across the country every Sunday evening, and on that week’s program went on a bit of a nationalist tear. Talking about sabotage and sedition, he segued neatly into the note about Waldport—a place that meant little to a national audience other than that it was somewhere on the Pacific coast and therefore vulnerable to Japan. The exact nature of the CO “activity” wasn’t made clear, nor did it need to be, as innuendo alone is often sufficient to incite suspicion during times of uncertainty and fear. Winchell had gotten the story from Dave Hall, editor of the Lincoln County Times, Waldport’s four-page weekly newspaper. It had been a shot in the dark scoring a mention on the Winchell show, and Hall was ecstatic about his small-town journalism coup, greeting townspeople the next day with, “Did you hear my story break on Winchell’s program?”1 Context is everything in cases like this, and Hall’s context apparently was that these “conchies” south of town were up to no good. He had recently published some editorials in his paper, quoting from Everson’s War Elegies and implying that they were unpatriotic. After the mention on the Winchell program Hall commented on the Tide, which he described as “published by three or four conscientious objectors at Camp Angel near here.” Never mind that this had been the official camp newsletter with a dozen people involved in its production, that it was no longer being published, that the article he mentioned was six months old, and that he’d had it in his possession the entire time. He pulled a single paragraph from a five-page story on how propaganda is used to demonize the enemy and rhetorically asked, “Why is this rot being published???” The attacks continued into February, generally along the lines that anyone who didn’t unquestionably support the war was not just un-American but an enemy. 92 here on the edge “All these so called Pacifist Movements are the result of warped minds and cockeyed thinking, or they are Nazi-inspired,” Hall wrote. “They are anti-American and should be silenced in war-time.”2 The newspaper attacks were at first surprising to the camp members. Hall had been friendly with the camp, but something changed after the Untide group bought the old Challenge Gordon press. It turned out that the Lincoln County Times had once used this press in a partnership, Dick Mills said. But when Hall’s partner felt he’d been shorted some money by the editor, he took full ownership of the printing press and put it up for sale on consignment at Doc Workman’s secondhand store—and told Workman he could sell it to anybody except Dave Hall. Once Hall learned the press had been sold to the COs, he launched his attacks, Mills said, stressing that the newspaper had possessed copies of the War Elegies and the Tide since the previous summer. “Neither of these publications contained news until Dave had an axe to grind.” And, Mills added, he’d learned that one of the Portland newspapers had told Hall they would pay “a goodly sum for all well-documented stories of subversive activities ” at Camp Angel.3 By today’s standards, this was pretty lightweight stuff. But in 1944, in a village of some six hundred people, it couldn’t be left unanswered—particularly with the Winchell announcement’s ability to feed fear and suspicion well beyond the specific region. In March, the camp sent out a letter to the community with the salutation, “To Our Friends and Neighbors.” A short paragraph summarized how the men came to be in the camp, and then came a listing of what they had accomplished while there: Since October 1942 these men have devoted 8½ hours a day for 6 days a week to work of National Importance under the direction of the Siuslaw National Forest officials. The work has resulted in the planting of 2½ million trees on the 9,000 acres in the [Blodgett] Tract, the construction of 9 miles of gravel roads, the building of 3½ miles of fire...

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