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8 Foreword “Pacifism . . . is not a matter of calm[ly] looking on; it is work, hard work.” Käthe Kollwitz, February 21, 1944 Amid the torrent of books recalling America’s World War II experience on the battlefield and the home front, one facet of that experience has received scant attention. This is the history of a small but significant number of Americans who for reasons of conscience refused military service despite massive pressure to fight in what has come to be called “the good war.” Many of these young men belonged to one of the so-called “historic peace churches:” the Society of Friends (Quakers); the Church of the Brethren; and the various branches and offshoots of the Mennonites, including the Amish and the Brethren in Christ, the denomination in which I was reared. Heirs to pacifist beliefs stretching back through the centuries to the very beginnings of Christianity, these groups preached non-resistance and encouraged young men of draft age to honor the Bible’s injunctions against violence and killing, even if it meant refusing their government’s demand to take up arms in time of war. In World War I, an earlier generation of conscientious objectors (COs) faced only two stark choices: prison or non-combatant service in the military. In World War II, however, thanks to the efforts of leaders from the historic peace churches, the government provided an alternative: performing work in the national interest in a non-military program called Civilian Public Service (CPS) for the war’s duration and six months beyond. Some twelve thousand young COs, mostly from the peace churches, but also Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of various mainstream Protestant denominations, and some with no religious affiliation at all, chose the CPS option. While some worked in mental hospitals, in medical-experimentation programs, or other individual or small-group assignments, most were sent to remote camps in wilderness or semi-wilderness areas where they engaged in forestry work, soil conservation, trail maintenance, fire fighting, and similar outdoor tasks. The New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps Foreword 9 (CCC) for jobless youth in the 1930s provided the model for CPS. Indeed, many CPS camps had formerly been CCC facilities. Mostly out of the public eye at the time, and only dimly remembered today, the CPS program profoundly influenced the young men who served in it, along with their families and loved ones. Often having little in common with their camp-mates apart from a shared objection to military service, CPS men found themselves interacting with others of differing cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, and political orientation, ranging from quietist withdrawal to radical activism. The CPS experience also fostered personal skills and talents—manual, verbal, aesthetic, and intellectual—that in some cases prepared the way for future careers in the arts, academia, politics, business, and public service. For example, one young man at Oregon’s Cascade Locks camp, Wendell Harmon, gained experience as editor of the camp newsletter that later stood him in good stead in writing a Ph.D. dissertation in American history at UCLA and as a college history professor. The Civilian Public Service program has attracted historians’ attention, including its role as a prototype for the later Peace Corps and other national-service programs. And CPS, of course, figures in general histories of pacifism in America and studies of the draft and of the government’s handling of conscientious objectors throughout U.S. history. Yet we have very few micro-level accounts of the actual experience of individuals in specific camps. Jeffrey Kovac’s history of the CPS camp sponsored by the Church of the Brethren at Cascade Locks, Oregon, is thus especially welcome. Initially drawn to the story by conversations with his father-in-law, a World War II CO who served at Cascade Locks, Kovac went on to mine a rich array of primary sources, including letters, ephemeral documents, reunion videotapes, and oral-history interviews. From this research he has crafted an engaging and illuminating close-up account of life in a CPS camp. A professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee, he clearly also possesses a knack for historical investigation and writing. The choice of Cascade Locks—situated some forty miles east of Portland in the beautiful Columbia River valley near Mount Hood—is a particular happy one. Not only was this the largest CPS camp, but it brought together an unusually diverse and talented group of COs with interests in literature, architecture, music, politics, philosophy...

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