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Conscientious Objector’s Tale
- University Press of New England
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204 It was a December Sunday. I was attending a reunion of kids from a summer camp, where I was trying to show off my skill at bowling. The target of my blowhards was a tall, almost skinny 12-year-old girl who—unbeknownst to both of us—would be my wife 10 years later. In the midst of my song and dance, somebody shouted, The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor! Everything in the bowling alley stopped. After moments of staring at each other, we asked, almost as an ensemble: Where’s Pearl Harbor? Probably because most of the adults there were cosmopolitan New Yorkers, nobody could answer the question until one faint voice timidly ventured, Hawaii. Later that afternoon, we understood that this meant the United States was going to declare war on Japan—as President Roosevelt did, the next day. At 14, and freshly pleased with myself that I had been admitted to what I considered to be the best high school in the world—Stuyvesant, A Conscientious Objector’s Tale • Robert Sokol Robert as a “lightkeeper” in 1946 A Conscientious Objector’s Tale: Robert Sokol 205 in New York city—a comma was inserted into my life. From that day on there was constant discussion at home, in school, on the radio, and in the cover pages over the sports section of The New York Times. Yes, I had heard something about a conscription law, but that I would be drafted never dawned on me. I stayed busy and, with a modicum of success, tried school politicking, since Stuyvesant’s preëminent chess and fencing teams begged me not to join. Our family essentially escaped the travails of the Great Depression , but as a longtime syndicalist/socialist and opponent of capitalist and imperialist wars, my father was in constant dialogue with people of diverse political persuasions. On every May 1st during the 1930s we marched down Sixth and Seventh Avenues to Union Square in Manhattan , waving placards denouncing Hitler, Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito , and then Stalin and the Communist Party. Concomitant to these activities, and because of my father’s Weltanschauung , my brother and I attended a unit of the The Modern Sunday School on Sunday mornings. It is difficult to recall the specific information we were exposed to and the projects we worked on, but one in particular made an impression on me: that murder, killing, and wars were all—and equally—bad. The Draft During my senior year in high school I registered with Selective Service , as all 18-year-old men were required to do. This turned out to be a conflictful year for me. Very prominent in my thinking was the political and moral argument that the Nazis had to be defeated to stop the horrid elimination of Jews, socialists, homosexuals, Romanies, and political dissenters in Europe. It held moral force for me. At the same time, my earlier training in The Modern Sunday School and the teachings at home convinced me that all wars had to be abolished and mass killing stopped. Toward that end, bearing personal witness against wars was imperative. With considerable ambivalence, I chose the latter path. When initially registering with a local Selective Service Board, it was necessary to complete a questionnaire that included a place to sign the following statement: [3.16.81.94] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 03:50 GMT) 206 World War II Remembered By reason of religious training and belief I am conscientiously opposed to war in any form and for this reason request that the local board furnish me a special form for Conscientious Objectors, which I am to complete and return to the local board. Also required were the reasons for the registrant’s objections, organizational memberships, references, and an affidavit supporting his claim. One could also ask for exemption from combatant training and service, or for complete exemption from all military activities and assignment to work of national importance under civilian direction. The local board declined my request for a Conscientious Objector classification, forwarding instead the one for I-A: ready for induction. I appealed the decision to the New York Appeal Board, requesting a IV-E classification that would lead to my assignment to a Civilian Public Service camp to do work of national importance under civilian direction. This second appeal also failed, leaving one last appeal. From that time on, the Department of Justice assumed jurisdiction of my case, with the FBI doing a widespread investigation of my background, family...