A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their StoriesLarry Gara, Lenna Mae Gara Kent State University Press, 1999 - 207 pages Little is known about those who openly refused to enter military service in World War II because of their convictions against killing. While many of those men accepted alternative civilian service, more than 6,000 were incarcerated with sentences ranging from a few months to five years. Some were tried, convicted, and reimprisoned for essentially the same offense--resisting induction into the armed forces--after their initial release. In A Few Small Candles, ten men tell why they resisted, what happened to them, and how they feel about that experience today. Their stories detail the resisters' struggles against racial segregation in prison, as well as how they instigated work and hunger strikes to demonstrate against other prison injustices. Each of the ten has remained active in various causes relating to peace and social justice. This is a unique collection of memoirs that illuminated the American homefront during World War II and provides an important source for those interested in the American peace movement. |
From inside the book
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... Ashland , Kentucky . Eleanor worked in a nearby nursery school . A number of us work- ing in the area became interested in the approaching date of Janu- ary 26 , India's Independence Day . Even though they had not yet received their ...
... Ashland , took off his shoes and socks and became the " Barefoot Boy " again . I should say that Ashland had a much - improved atmosphere over Chillicothe , which had a large population of youthful offenders . Ashland had a large number ...
... Ashland when I came to work in the front area . Later on Bayard Rustin came in , a towering addition and one involved in a major integration effort . Another friend was Wilbur Burton , former copy editor for the New York Times . He was ...
... Ashland , a fellow Antiochian and partner in starting Ahimsa Farm , where we studied nonviolent methods for social change until most of us ended up in prison . Bayard Rustin , an African American CO from New York , was a staff member of ...
... Ashland with a three - year sentence . We were all cheered by his arrival , but a major problem loomed ahead . I was elected by fellow inmates to the Inmate Representative Com- mittee that Warden Hagerman had set up . We met at regular ...
Contents
1 | |
20 | |
My Resistance to World War II | 38 |
My War and My Peace | 53 |
My War on War | 78 |
War Resistance in World War II | 98 |
Reflections of a Religious War Objector Half a Century Later | 130 |
Prison and Butterfly Wings | 152 |
How the War Changed My Life | 174 |
My Story of World War II | 194 |
Selected Additional Readings | 205 |